Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — SALE, GLOUCESTER

Sir J. Vaughan-Morgan: asked the Attorney-General what progress has been made in initiating proceedings against those who were engaged in illegal activities at a sale in Gloucestershire and afterwards at an inn on 28th September, 1964.

The Solicitor-General (Sir Dingle Foot): The police report on this case is now under consideration by the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Sir J. Vaughan-Morgan: That is very good news as far as it goes, but can the hon. and learned Gentleman say what stage action has reached about the other scandals mentioned in the Daily Mail and other newspapers concerning the sale of surplus stores?

The Solicitor-General: Not, I think, in answer to this Question.

Oral Answers to Questions — PERSONAL INJURIES (ASSESSMENT OF DAMAGES)

Mr. William Wells: asked the Attorney-General what consideration he has given to the decision of the Court of Appeal in the case of Ward against James, on the matter of assessment of damages by juries, as explained in the case of Hodges against Harland and Wolff, Limited; and what action Her Majesty's Government will take as a result.

The Solicitor-General: I regret that I have nothing to add to the Answer which my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General gave to a Question by the right hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson) on 9th February.

Mr. Well: Will my hon. and learned Friend bear in mind that it is important to maintain the constitutional right of the subject to trial by jury, even at the expence of the convenience of those who have to meet the claims and advise on them, in obtaining uniformity of treatment?

The Solicitor-General: I am not sure that I accept that comment, but I would remind my hon. and learned Friend that, as recently as 9th February, my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General informed the House that the Government recognise that the present state of the law and practice relating to the assessment of damages for personal injuries is unsatisfactory. We intend that there should be an inquiry into this matter, but my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor is now considering what form that inquiry should take.

Mr. Hector Hughes: In view of the latter part of my hon. and learned Friend's reply, will he take into account the constructive observations which were made by members of the Bench and other authoritative persons in the legal profession with a view to making some progress in this very important matter which affects not only litigants but many other people who have been injured and who have claims to be adjudicated upon?

The Solicitor-General: I shall always be willing to consider any representations made by my hon. and learned Friend.

Oral Answers to Questions — BOARD OF TRADE

Door-to-door Salesmen

Mr. Gresham Cooke: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether, in connection with his future plans for consumer protection in general and the possible licensing of door-to-door salesmen in particular, he will make a special investigation into the present methods followed in connection with the sale in this country of an encyclopaedia, whose name has been sent to him.

The Minister of State, Board of Trade (Mr. George Darling): On the licensing of doorstep salesmen, I await the views


of the Consumer Council. In considering the matter I, and no doubt the Council also, will take full account of all sales methods used, including those to sell encyclopaedias.

Mr. Gresham Cooke: Is the Minister aware that I have received a large number of complaints against the American high pressure method of salesmen selling the Encyclopaedia Britannica by gaining entrance and by pretending to be market research workers and so on, and also against the method of selling Collier's Encyclopaedia? Can the Minister say whether there have been any improvements in the methods of selling?

Mr. Darling: Not in regard to Colliers, but as far as the Encyclopaedia Britannica is concerned the company has told my Department that it has recently made a number of changes in its methods, including, for example, instructions to its sales staff to discontinue the market survey approach and the making of repeated telephone calls.

Mr. Shepherd: Will the Minister bear in mind that the best way of dealing with this situation is to license the firms and not the salesmen, and that the sanction which the Government could then have against misuse would be very much stronger?

Mr. Darling: This is a matter which the Consumer Council is investigating, and I think the hon. Gentleman knows that we are awaiting its recommendations I am sure that it has this point in mind.

Mr. Scott-Hopkins: Is the Minister aware that this is not only confined to the encyclopaedia salesmen but covers a greater field? I have already had correspondence with him about it. When does he consider that the Consumer Council will report; if it will be some length of time, will he consider taking action urgently, bringing legislation forward incorporating something in the nature of the 1964 Hire-Purchase Act whereby a certain period of time has to elapse before the agreement becomes binding?

Mr. Darling: The Consumer Council inquiry is very wide and will cover the points that the hon. Member wrote to me about. I hope that the inquiry will not

take too long, but we must wait for it to be completed and see what its recommendations are before we move forward with legislation.

Mr. Francis Noel-Baker: Does not my right hon. Friend agree that one way in which the public can protect itself against hard selling methods of this kind is by supporting the various appropriate consumer organisations and, in this context, the Advertising Inquiry Council, which recently sent a deputation to his Department?

Import Surcharge

Mr. Burden: asked the President of the Board of Trade how many deputations he has received, or has agreed to receive, from British industries in regard to the adverse effect the 15 per cent. import surcharge has had on their export potential.

The President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Douglas Jay): Four deputations were received by my hon. Friends the Ministers of State after the import charge was imposed. At these meetings many aspects of the charge were raised, including its effect on exports. No other meetings have been arranged.

Mr. Burden: Does the right hon. Gentleman not realise that there is a great deal of antagonism among importers of our goods because the fact that he has now been able to reduce the surcharge by 5 per cent. shows that it wag never necessary to impose it at the rate of 15 per cent., plus the fact that the goods which are now being delivered are in respect of orders placed well before the surcharge was imposed?

Mr. Jay: No, Sir, there is no evidence that the surcharge has affected our exports. The fact is that British exports were falling up to the time when the surcharge was imposed and other measures were taken and since then they have been rising.

Mr. Barber: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the view he has just expressed is not shared by large numbers of British exporters? Will he enlighten the House on two points which are puzzling many people? First, if the surcharge, at a level of 15 per cent., has had any significant effect so far on the level of imports, how can he and his


right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer say that the two months' advance notice of the cut will not cause an artificial holding off until after 27th April, followed thereafter by a pent-up flood of imports? [HON. MEMBERS: "Speech."] This is a very important point. Secondly, if the right hon. Gentleman is correct in saying that advance notice will have very little effect, why has he deferred the operative date for two months?

Mr. Jay: The view that I expressed is supported by the figures. The other fact that the right hon. Gentleman has not noticed is that since the surcharge was imposed imports of goods subject to the surcharge have actually been reduced. We have, therefore, made enough progress to be able to make this first relaxation.

Office Development (Seaside Areas)

Mr. Ridsdale: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will take steps to encourage industry and Government Departments to locate their offices in seaside areas and outside the Greater London area.

Mr. Darling: In administering the proposed control of office development, the Board of Trade expects to take account, among other factors, of the needs of some seaside areas for office employment.

Mr. Ridsdale: Do the Government realise the advantage to health alone of moving to the seaside, especially the seaside areas of north-east Essex? Can he say what steps he is taking? Does he realise that this is a very urgent probof British business?

Mr. Darling: If I even hinted that a certain area would be receiving favourable consideration scores of hon. Members would immediately protest. It is too early to say where office development will be steered until comprehensive studies in relation to office location have been completed.

Mr. Hall-Davis: Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the proposed transfer of the Government Department—the Post Office Savings Division—from Morecambe? Will he bear in mind the desirability of replacing this work with alternative Government work?

Mr. Darling: We will look into the matter.

High Pressure Sales

Mr. Shepherd: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he is aware of the high pressure sales techniques employed by dancing schools, health clubs, and hair clinics to force people into signing contracts involving substantial sums of money; and whether he will take steps to apply a waiting period in respect of these agreements.

Mr. Darling: Except in the case of one company, which has been discussed this week, Universal Health Studios Ltd., I have received no complaints about high pressure salesmanship by businesses of these kinds but I am considering whether further legislation is necessary and practicable.

Mr. Shepherd: Will the Minister bear in mind the fact that many complaints have been made against this type of activity, which has been largely imported from the United States of America? Is it not desirable to do something to stop this behaviour, which reflects very badly and unreasonably on the whole of British business?

Mr. Darling: If the hon. Member will read the reply that I made in the Adjournment debate on Tuesday, I think he will find that I have covered his point.

Mr. Dodds: My hon. Friend mentioned Universal Health Studios Ltd. Did not he receive an undertaking from that firm that it would have a cooling-off period? What is happening to that?

Mr. Darling: My hon. Friend has a later Question on that subject.

Canada

Mr. Shepherd: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will state the total debit or credit on Canadian trade with the United Kingdom in respect of the latest available 10 years; and how the balance has been settled.

Mr. Hamling: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will give details of the total debit or credit on Canadian trade with the United Kingdom over the last 10 years; and how the balance has been settled.

Mr. Jay: Figures of our trade with Canada can be obtained from Account IV of the Trade and Navigation Accounts covering this period. It is not possible to say how the trade balance with a single country has been financed.

Mr. Shepherd: Is it not the case that the deficit has been about £1,500 million over the past ten years, and that at least some of that deficit will have to be financed by the payment of gold and dollars? Can he say how long the Government will allow a state of affairs to continue which puts such a grossly unfair burden on this country?

Mr. Jay: It is true that we have a very serious trade deficit with Canada, which gives us great concern. I have recently made repeated representations to the Canadian authorities about this, and we are having further discussions about it.

Mr. Hamling: Does not my right hon. Friend agree that this serious situation has developed very much over the last ten years and that hon. Members on this side of the House regard it as a very serious matter?

Mr. Jay: Yes. It certainly has become worse in recent years. That is one reason why we are attempting to remedy it.

Mr. Shepherd: Is it not a fact that, because of tariff barriers, it is much more difficult for many British manufacturers to sell in Canada than in the United States? Is it not quite unfair that our manufacturers should have to face these very high tariffs and a system which amounts almost to a national economic autocracy, when we have this extraordinarily unfavourable balance with Canada?

Mr. Jay: There are particular difficulties connected with anti-dumping duties, as the hon. Member knows. We are making representations about this. I am sure that the Canadian authorities will also pay attention to what the hon. Member has said today.

United States of America

Mr. Gresham Cooke: asked the President of the Board of Trade what specific steps he is taking at the present

time to promote increased trade with the United States of America.

Mr. Jay: I would refer the hon. Member to the Answer which I gave to the hon. Member for Battersea South (Mr. Perry) on 1st February. I am consulting the British National Export Council and the Committee for Exports to the U.S.A. about the best way of putting these measures into effect in the United States.

Mr. Gresham Cooke: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind—and this refers also to the last Question—that we shall have to earn more American dollars this year because, for example, exports of British motor cars will fall owing to the recent agreement between America and Canada under which they have a free trade in motor cars, leaving a tariff imposed against this country? Will he make the strongest protest to the Canadian Government against this discrimination which operates against one of their Commonwealth partners?

Mr. Jay: Yes. I have protested personally to both the American and Canadian authorities about this, and we are in discussion how to find the best way out of it. As for exports to the United States generally, as the hon. Member knows there is to be a permanent British trade centre in New York and a series of store promotions and British weeks—and all the export measures that I announced a month ago are available in respect of exports to the United States.

Sir Rolf Dudley Williams: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether this action by the United States and Canada conflicts with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade?

Mr. Jay: This will be discussed in G.A.T.T., where there will be an opportunity for other countries to represent their views.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: In order to improve our trade with the United States of America, will my right hon. Friend consider sending an exhibition ship there? Does he realise that if he sent the "Britannia" chock-full of Scotch whisky our exports would increase extraordinarily?

Mr. Jay: I think that we will start with the proposed trade centre in New York.

Merchant Shipping Acts

Sir Knox Cunningham: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will consolidate the Acts of Parliament which deal with merchant shipping or any group of such Acts which deal with specific aspects of shipping as was done in the Merchant Shipping Act, 1894, which was itself a consolidating Measure.

The Minister of State, Board of Trade (Mr. Roy Mason): It would not be worthwhile to consolidate the Merchant Shipping Acts without revising them at the same time. Complete revision would require wide consultations and give rise to a heavy load of work. I am not satisfied that we should be justified in undertaking this at present. I hope that we shall be able to revise the Acts gradually by legislation dealing with the different subjects separately but this is bound to take a considerable time.

Sir Knox Cunningham: Will the hon. Gentleman say when he is going to make a start with this piecemeal consolidation? Will this not be a useful piece of legal reform for the second 100 not-so-dynamic days? Is not one of the difficulties which the hon. Gentleman is experiencing that it is not now any longer possible to define what is a British ship?

Mr. Mason: I do not know why the hon. and learned Gentleman should be so critical about the reply he has received. He put four similar questions to the previous Administration during the last 18 months and the then Minister of Transport briefly told him, "No". We have started talks in my Department with the shipowners and seafarers with a view to gradually revising the legislation.

Mr. Hogg: Would not the hon. Gentleman think this possibly one of the matters on which the new Law Reform Commissioners might have something to say, or are they to be useless for this kind of law reform?

Mr. Mason: It is not necessary to go to them for this type of legislation. The Board of Trade, in conjunction with the shipowners and seafarers, is gradually revising this legislation. We have started on the process.

Marine Nuclear Propulsion

Mr. Wall: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will make a statement on the progress of talks between the two consortia and the Government on nuclear propulsion.

Mr. Mason: No talks are at present in progress.

Mr. Wall: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that we are getting behind very many of the leading maritime nations in the development of a nuclear ship? Is he aware that only two days ago his right hon. Friend said that the A.E.A. was ready to design a reactor for trials at sea and that it admitted that we will not get any further until we have a nuclear reactor at sea?

Mr. Mason: Technically, the Atomic Energy Authority has said that we can go ahead. The point is that the Authority has not yet completed its review. We started three months ago to find out whether (a) it should be a test bed at sea and further money should be spent on research and development, or (b) whether there is an economic nuclear unit available and, if that were so and we took a decision to go ahead, whether we could by-pass other nations who use nuclear propulsion units.

Mr. Wingfield Digby: Surely it is well known that there is no economic reactor at present and that the whole argument is that we need experience of how these things work at sea and how to cope with the problem of screening, on which other nations are making rapid strides?

Mr. Mason: We must wait until the review is complete before taking a final decision.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Would not my hon. Friend agree that it was the long period of shilly-shallying on the part of the previous Administration which has left us so far behind today?

Mr. Mason: I am obliged to my hon. Friend for that comment. He has reinforced the point which I have already expressed.

Mr. Wingfield Digby: asked the President of the Board of Trade what study he has made of shipyards overseas which build or plan to build nuclear


merchant ships; and if he will take the results of this study into account before reaching his decision on the British nuclear powered merchant ship.

Mr. Mason: The Government are keeping in touch with developments overseas and will take all the available information into account in reaching a decision.

Mr. Digby: Has the Minister of State studied this report that a well-known foreign shipowner is disposing of his fleet with a view to replacing it with a nuclear-powered fleet to be built in a foreign shipyard? Should that not be taken into account when studying this problem.

Mr. Mason: Certainly.

Mr. Wall: Could the Minister of State say when he hopes to be able to reach a decision about maritime nuclear reactors?

Mr. Mason: I cannot say at this stage I have told the hon. Member time and time again that it is subject to a review. He should not be complaining bitterly about three or four months' study when the previous Administration made no progress whatsoever.

Mr. Hogg: Does the Minister of State not recall that there was a report by the Powell Committee? Exactly what more does he want to find out from his current review than has been already published by the Powell Committee?

Mr. Mason: The right hon. Gentleman should get his facts straight. First of all, it was the Padmore Committee which the previous Administration were responsible for setting up. He was himself responsible for debating the Padmore Committee Report on the Floor of the House. No doubt he will remember that he defended their conclusions, which were inconclusive.

Mr. Hogg: Whilst conceding that I made a mistake about the name, which is no doubt a matter of great seriousness and great importance to the House, will the hon. Gentleman answer the Question? What more does he hope to get than he has already out of the Report of that Committee?

Mr. Mason: The determination to what extent public money should be spent on the project.

Universal Health Studios Ltd.

Mr. Dodds: asked the President of the Board of Trade what is the result of discussions with the Code of Advertising Practice Committee and the Advertising Standards Authority and any other organisation that gives guidance to newspapers in these matters as to advertisements by the Universal Health Studios Limited.

Mr. Darling: I understand that the Code of Advertising Practices Committee has recommended that all advertisements by this company should be suspended.

Mr. Dodds: I thank my hon. Friend for what he has said in that connection. Will he explain the mystery of why he wrote to me at the beginning of January stating that he had come to an agreement at this firm, that they should cut the price and show the cost in the advertisement, which never materialised? Was it one more agreement which was not kept by the Universal Health Studios Limited?

Mr. Darling: There was no agreement. The Board of Trade cannot make agreements of this kind. As a result of publicity and pressure the company wrote to say it would discontinue this kind of advertising. I do not know why it has continued not to show the cost in its advertisement. As I explained during the Adjournment debate on Tuesday, I have no power to require the company to do so. No doubt the voluntary control bodies will consider this point when the lifting of their ban is being discussed.

Mr. Francis Noel-Baker: Can my hon. Friend say what right an unofficial body which he has mentioned has to include the, name "Authority" in its title? When it is reconsidered by the advertising industry, will he ask that they choose a less misleading one?

Mr. Darling: That is entirely another question. The relationship between the Code of Advertising Practice Committee and the Advertising Standards Authority is, I think, well known to my hon. Friend.

Mr. Dodds: asked the President of the Board of Trade what was the nature of the communication which was sent to


him by the Deputy Director of the Consumer Council in respect of the practices of the Universal Health Studios Limited.

Mr. Darling: An acknowledgment of the communication to which I referred in my reply to my hon. Friend on 5th February.

Mr. Dodds: I do not understand what that means. Will my hon. Friend now give an answer to the question put before, what about the cooling-off period, or the waiting period? He said he had some agreement with the Universal Health Studios Limited. Why has not it been carried out?

Mr. Speaker: That supplementary question does not arise out of the Answer.

Mr. Dodds: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I asked a Question earlier and, in reply, the Minister said that there was a Question on the Order Paper which he would answer later.

Mr. Speaker: A supplementary question must arise out of the Answer. I do not see how the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question arose out of this Answer.

Mr. Gresham Cooke: Is the Minister aware that a number of Americans seem to be coming to this country and forming these sort of bogus companies? Is he aware that one called Readers Service Ltd. has now gone into liquidation? Would he warn the appropriate bodies and the newspapers that there are these Americans who come to this country to form these high pressure sales companies?

Mr. Darling: The point which the hon. Gentleman has raised and the matter raised by my hon. Friend are being considered. The question of a cooling-off period in this kind of contract is a very difficult one; it has all kinds of legal snags. We are giving it active consideration.

Mr. Ogden: asked the President of the Board of Trade, what discussions he has now had with the Attorney-General regarding continuing reports of undesirable sales-promotion techniques used by the Universal Health Studios Limited; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Darling: As I said in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and

Crayford (Mr. Dodds) on 5th February, the Board of Trade have sent details of complaints made by members of the public about this company's methods to the Metropolitan Police. I understand that the police are making inquiries about some of the complaints, and I do not think that it would be in the public interest that I should say any more.

Mr. Ogden: Will my right hon. Friend say whether in that correspondence he has considered whether the people who give professional health services in the studios should have professional qualifications? Will he bear in mind the danger of unqualified people giving such technical advice?

Mr. Darling: That is a matter which ought to be discussed with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health. In fact, we have had one or two preliminary discussions on this matter.

Mr. John Hall: Is it true that Universal Health Studios Limited have invited the police to make an investigation into their affairs and that the police have refused that invitation?

Mr. Darling: I think that if the hon. Member looks up the invitation which was made by Universal Health Studios he will find that it was for an investigation into their contract, and method of dealing with contracts and so on. I would prefer to leave this matter, because the police have, I understand, taken that into consideration, too.

School Blazers (Standards)

Mrs. Joyce Butler: asked the President of the Board of Trade what official publicity will be given to the new British Standard Specification for school blazer cloth to ensure that parents of schoolchildren are aware of it.

Mr. Darling: The responsibility for giving publicity to British Standards rests of course with the British Standards Institution, which is an independent body. I understand, however, that the Institution's Press release about the standard received very good coverage in the national, provincial and trade Press.

Mrs. Butler: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply, and I welcome the new


standard which is long overdue and will be a great help to the hard-pressed parents of schoolchildren. Is my hon. Friend aware that the standard is less than the R.T.S.A. which some manufacturers have adopted? Does he see any possibility of the standard being raised in the near future and, if not, would he look into the possibility?

Mr. Darling: This is a question which possibly could be discussed by the British Standards Institution and the Retailing Trading Standards Association, but at least we have a standard in a sphere where I agree that it has been greatly needed. I hope that British manufacturers will adopt the standard and that school authorities will encourage the use of any cloth which complies with it.

Mr. Peter Emery: Will the hon. Gentleman agree that the British Standards Institution does a considerable amount of very good work? Would he consider consulting its Council about the appointment of more consumer element to the Committee considering standards? Does he think that too frequently standards are arranged by manufacturers agreeing on the standard and that further consideration should be taken on the consumer side?

Mr. Darling: I understand that discussions on this matter are going on with the British Standards Institution and the Consumer Council. The Council is being increasingly represented in this kind of work.

Shipbuilding

Mr. McMaster: asked the President of the Board of Trade by what percentage Japanese shipbuilding yards undercut best British shipyard tenders for new orders; and what steps he intends to take to help close this gap.

Mr. Mason: There is no official information about British or foreign prices for ships. Where there are differences in price, these seem to vary greatly according to the type of ship. The Shipbuilding Inquiry Committee will consider what action might help the British shipbuilding industry to become more competitive in world markets.

Mr. McMaster: In view of the recent visit by the hon. Gentleman to Japan

and the urgency of this problem, will he take immediate steps to see that such matters as costing, the level of capital investment, the credit facilities available and problems of demarcation are dealt with urgently in order that we may be fully competitive in this important field?

Mr. Mason: All these matters will be subject to inquiry by the Committee.

Captain Orr: Can the hon. Member say what has happened to the Shipbuilding Committee of Inquiry? Has it started work, and when can we expect a report?

Mr. Mason: It started work ten days ago, and I had the pleasure of addressing it just over a week ago.

Mr. Snow: Is my hon. Friend aware that the objective way in which he reported on the Japanese shipping industry and its relationship in the world situation was very much admired in many quarters?

Mr. Mason: I am much obliged to my hon. Friend.

Merchandise Marks (Boots and Shoes)

Mr. McNair-Wilson: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will introduce legislation to provide a system of marking boots and shoes to ensure that customers are made aware of materials used in their manufacture.

Mr. Darling: The revised merchandise marks legislation—which incidentally will have to have a new name when we have finished with it—which I am preparing will provide, as recommended by the Molony Committee, a general power to require informative labelling of specified classes of goods.

Mr. McNair-Wilson: While thanking the hon. Gentleman for that reply, is he aware that customers up and down the country are at the moment buying footwear, much of it very shoddy, without any idea of what it is made of? Would he not think that this was something which should be urgently considered as a sensible measure of consumer protection?

Mr. Darling: I agree that it is an urgent matter, and we will introduce the legislation I have mentioned as soon as is practicable.

Shipowners (Credit Facilities)

Mr. Wingfield Digby: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will take steps to make available to British and foreign shipowners a line of credit at a modest rate, in order to attract shipbuilding orders back to this country.

Mr. Ian Lloyd: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will take steps to ensure that British shipowners are enabled to build ships in British shipyards on loan terms which are at least as favourable as those available to their competitors.

Mr. Pounder: asked the President of the Board of Trade what proposals he has for improving credit facilities for British shipowners seeking to build ships in British shipyards.

Mr. Blenkinsop: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will seek to make special loan facilities available to British shipowners for orders placed in British yards.

Mr. Jay: Following my recent announcement of improved credit facilities for exports, orders exceeding a quarter of a million tons have been placed in British yards by foreign owners and the number of foreign inquiries has increased. I have no evidence that the credit facilities available at present to British shipowners adversely affect their competitive position.

Mr. Digby: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the growing feeling that something useful on these lines is needed? Will he have another look at this in view of the necessity to help shipowners and shipbuilders?

Mr. Jay: We are certainly looking at this continuously, but since these credit facilities were improved by the present Government orders for shipbuilding have increased and the position is much more encouraging.

Mr. Lloyd: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that although the methods which the Government have chosen to assist the shipbuilding industry are important to that industry, they are not the best which might be chosen if the results are to damage the shipowning industry of this country, which is the

natural and obvious customer of the shipbuilding industry and, therefore, must be maintained primarily?

Mr. Jay: I do not think they are, but the hon. Gentleman knows that the investment allowance is available to the British shipowners.

Mr. Pounder: While I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that in recent weeks the credit facilities have been beneficial to British shipyards, is he aware that they are still far short of the boost given under the shipbuilding credit facilities of a year or so ago, and that if those were reintroduced that would be a great help?

Mr. Jay: For the long-term solution we are looking to the conclusions of the shipbuilding inquiry, about which my hon. Friend the Minister of State has spoken.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Would my right hon. Friend say whether it would be possible to refer this matter to the inquiry? Could they not be asked to make an interim report before the conclusion of their lengthy and full report?

Mr. Jay: I see no reason why they should not cover this issue in their discussions.

South Africa

Mr. Biggs-Davison: asked the President of the Board of Trade what alternative markets the Government have obtained in view of the loss of £150 million of South African arms orders over the next three years.

Mr. Jay: The figure quoted by the hon. Member bears no relation to our past trade, and the question of replacing exports of this magnitude does not arise.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that the figures which I have quoted are those which were given by the South African Minister of Defence and have not been challenged by Her Majesty's Government? Are not all the Prime Minister's glossy T.V. exhortations to export effort mocked by deliberate sacrifice to ideological prejudice and pressure of vast orders which are fully in the interests of Western and Commonwealth defence? Does not the right hon. Gentleman realise—[HON.


MEMBERS: "Speech."]—that we are being replaced in this huge expanding market, not only by our N.A.T.O. allies, but by Czechoslovakia, East Germany and other Communist leaders of the South Africa boycott brigade?

Mr. Jay: Whatever the source of the hon. Member's figures, they are incorrect. While in the matter of arms traffic we have now come into line with the United Nations, the United States and Canada, our peaceful trade in both directions with South Africa continues to increase.

Mr. Jackson: Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that, although we have had thirteen years of Tory failure, we have not yet sunk so low that we have to earn our living selling arms to support the apartheid policy in South Africa? Does not my right hon. Friend agree that if we wished to have satisfactory trade with South Africa, in practice, the arms trade is likely to ruin the peaceful trade because it will lead to the killing of Africans?

Mr. Jay: Yes, Sir.

Mr. Barber: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that my hon. Friend the Member for Chigwell (Mr. Biggs-Davison) is perfectly right in saying that South Africa will have no difficulty in getting the arms which she wants from other sources? Furthermore, will he urgently tell his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister that when he next makes a national appeal on television for everyone else in the country to change their attitudes on exports, it would help if he would set an example by changing his own attitude on export opportunities to South Africa of arms which are clearly not designed for internal repression?

Mr. Jay: Whatever South Africa does, we prefer to keep our obligations to the United Nations.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: Surely the right hon. Gentleman knows that under the Charter of the United Nations every country is protected in its right to acquire arms for external defence?

Mr. Jay: Surely the right hon. Gentleman knows that there is a particular United Nations Resolution relating to this traffic. We are closely observing this.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Mr. Biggs-Davison, for the next Question please.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: On a point of order. I beg to give notice that, in view of the unsatisfactory nature of that reply, I will raise the matter on the Adjournment at the earliest possible opportunity.

Tobacco (Rhodesia)

Mr. Biggs-Davison: asked the President of the Board of Trade what conversations and communications his Department has had with tobacco buyers regarding the implications of a unilateral declaration of Rhodesia's independence.

Mr. Jay: Board of Trade officials have had confidential discussions on tobacco supply problems with representatives of some of the major manufacturing companies. It was agreed that the substance of these discussions would not be disclosed.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that great concern was felt in Rhodesia because of certain discussions, which I fully understand the right hon. Gentleman cannot disclose? In view of the visit of the Lord Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations to Rhodesia, which we welcome, and which we hope will lead to a good understanding with the people of Rhodesia—[HON. MEMBERS: "All the people of Rhodesia?"] Of course, all the people of Rhodesia. May we understand that there will be no kind of economic menaces towards Rhodesia? Will he bear in mind the grave consequences to the balance of payments if we were forced to purchase perhaps 100 million dollars worth of leaf tobacco across the exchange?

Mr. Jay: So long as the Rhodesian Government refrain from any extreme step, I do not think that any of these difficulties need arise.

Merseyside

Mr. Heffer: asked the President of the Board of Trade, in view of the continuing high level of unemployment in the Merseyside area, what steps are being taken to introduce new industries into the area; and what proposals he has for the introduction and development


of new publicly-owned scientifically-based industries in the area.

Mr. Jay: The rate of unemployment on Merseyside in January was the lowest for that month in the last five years. During this time a considerable amount of new industry entered the area. I shall encourage more to do so, whether publicly-owned or otherwise. Two of the factories in the new programme of publicly-owned advance factories will be on Merseyside.

Mr. Heffer: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the statement that unemployment on Merseyside has been the lowest for the last five years will be very welcome on Merseyside, particularly in view of the fact that the basic reason for high unemployment on Merseyside has been the policies pursued by the Tory Government?

Lieut.-Colonel Sir Walter Bromley-Davenport: Rubbish.

Mr. Heffer: On the other hand, is my right hon. Friend prepared to indicate whether any steps are being taken for consultations with the Ministry of Overseas Development with a view to exports going from Merseyside to the under-developed areas?

Mr. Jay: I agree that a great deal more needs to be done, and I am discussing various proposals with my right hon. Friend.

Mr. Tilney: Will the President of the Board of Trade draw to the attention of industry generally that, despite the fact that British taxpayers' money is building them more industrial premises, at the end of last year over one million square feet of industrial premises were vacant on Merseyside?

Mr. Jay: I was not aware of that figure, but if it is correct I will certainly draw it to the attention of those concerned.

Scarborough

Sir A. Spearman: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will restore Scarborough to the list of development areas in view of the fact that the unemployment figure there is now 5·5 per cent.

Mr. Jay: The level of unemployment in this area, which averaged 3·8 per cent. in 1964, does not justify restoring it to the list of development districts.

Sir A. Spearman: Will the right hon. Gentleman look at that again, in view of the fact that the latest Ministry of Labour figures show that the present unemployment in the north-east special area is 3·1 per cent. and that the Ministry of Labour figure for Scarborough last year is an average of 4 per cent.?

Mr. Jay: I realise that the Scarborough area has a difficult seasonal problem, but the hon. Member knows that even if an area is not scheduled as a development district it is possible to grant I.D.C.s more freely there than one would in a really congested area.

European Free Trade Association

Mr. Marten: asked the President of the Board of Trade what contribution the tariff dismantling between the European Free Trade Association countries has had on keeping prices down.

Mr. Jay: A group of experts in E.F.T.A. is studying this subject. Many factors influence prices, and it is difficult to isolate the effects of tariff reductions.

Mr. Marten: Will the right hon Gentleman ask them particularly to find out whether, when the tariffs are being reduced, the exporters put their prices up at the same time?

Mr. Jay: I believe that the E.F.T.A tariff reductions have left some prices lower in this country than they would otherwise have been, but it would be difficult to establish this precisely and statistically at present. We are ourselves making a study of it.

Mr. Barber: Will the right hon. Gentleman also take into account in his own studies the effect of the surcharge on keeping prices up?

Mr. Jay: As the surcharge is now going down, we can look for some relief there, too.

STEEL INDUSTRY (NATIONALISATION)

Mr. Prior: asked the Prime Minister whether he will appoint an additional Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Power in view of the extra work involved in the renationalisation of steel.

Mr. Kershaw: asked the Prime Minister whether he will appoint another Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Power with a seat in this House, in view of the heavy work involved in the proposed legislation to do with the steel industry.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Wilson): No, Sir.

Mr. Prior: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that Lord Bowden would make an excellent choice for an appointment of this nature? Is he further aware that the noble Lord's views correspond much more accurately with those in the country than do the right hon. Gentleman's views on the subject of steel nationalisation? If he expects other people to give up their out-of-date views, would it not be a good example for him to give up his out-of-date views about steel nationalisation?

The Prime Minister: If the House looks at what my right hon. Friend said, I think they will find that his remarks do not bear the construction put on them by the hon. Member. I was asked whether I would recommend the appointment of an additional Parliamentary Secretary. I have the fullest confidence in my right hon. Friend and the Parliamentary Secretary to meet any calls put upon them.

Mr. Kershaw: Is the Prime Minister aware that Lord Bowden said that the Government's steel nationalisation plans were in jeopardy unless they were modified to help the Liberal Party to agree with them? Will the Prime Minister say what steps he proposes to take to modify steel nationalisation so as to help the Liberal Party to agree with him?

The Prime Minister: The Government will continue to put forward the proposals which they think are right in the interests of the nation, whether the Liberal Party agree with them or not.

Mr. Philip Noel-Baker: Can my right hon. Friend confirm that steel is a major factor in our balance of payments situation, that last year we paid £106 million for steel and iron imports which could and should have been made in this country, and that, in general, the case for steel nationalisation is so overwhelming that there will be no difficulty at all?

The Prime Minister: I think that the figures o a the balance of payments for

exports and imports were very authoritatively dealt with by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Power when this matter was last debated in the House. I seem to recall that on that occasion the House took a very wise decision when called upon to vote on this matter, and it will no doubt do so again.

Mr. Iain Macleod: Does the Prime Minister realise that these Questions are directed to the burden of work within the Department? Does he realise that the meeting between the Minister and the leaders of the steel industry last week was only the second meeting and that this consisted largely of the leaders of the industry telling the Minister that his speeches were harming the steel industry? Does he further realise that the undertaking to which the Prime Minister assented in the debate about firms with multiple interests—he knows the point well—has never been made to the House? Either these Ministers are overworked or they are inefficient. Which is it?

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman will have a chance, no doubt, to make those points when the matter is debated once again.

Hon Members: When?

The Prime Minister: When it appears in the weekly announcement of next week's business by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. We all know the impatience with which the right hon. Gentleman, for reasons which have nothing to do with steel, is awaiting this announcement. I have no doubt that, on that occasion, he will express the views of the steelmasters as fully and as slantedly as he has today.

Mr. Iain Macleod: Does the Prime Minister realise that the undertaking of full consultation was given not only to the steel industry but to industry and consumers generally in this country? Does he further realise that these consultations have turned out to be a farce, and will he see that these consultations are genuinely undertaken from now on?

The Prime Minister: In view of the need for these consultations, I cannot quite understand, except for the reason I hinted at, why the right hon. Gentleman is so impatient to bring the matter forward.

Mr. David Griffiths: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the allegations and assertions which hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite are making are purely "phoney" and that they are more concerned with what we are going to do on the question of land than on the question of steel?

Hon. Members: Answer.

The Prime Minister: It is not for me to attempt to fathom the workings of the minds of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. We really must make some progress.

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR ECONOMIC AFFAIRS (SPEECH)

Mr. Kershaw: asked the Prime Minister whether the public speech of the First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, made at the weekend 6th-7th February at Swadlincote, Derbyshire, on the subject of the aircraft industry, represents the policy of Her Majesty's Government.

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir.

Mr. Kershaw: Is the Prime Minister aware that his right hon. Friend said on that occasion to aircraft workers protesting about losing their jobs that if we were going to fall at this first attempt, over selfishness, what chance had we of clearing the other and bigger fences which were to come? Does the right hon. Gentleman consider that the aircraft workers are selfish in this regard, and may we have some knowledge as to what the other and bigger fences to come are?

The Prime Minister: I have seen the full report of my right hon. Friend's speech. I think that the reference made by my right hon. Friend was to the need—which, I thought, hon. Gentlemen opposite have been proclaiming for years—for some shift between industries in this country. I believe that the aircraft workers—and I think that this will prove at the end of the day to be the case with the aircraft employers—have shown very real understanding of the need for change in this respect, and I believe that everyone recognises that in addition to

the problems of the industry, about which we are certainly very concerned, there is also the problem of the interests of the taxpayer.

E.F.T.A. AND COMMON MARKET

Mr. Marten: asked the Prime Minister what steps he is now taking to promote economic unity between the European Free Trade Association and the Common Market.

The Prime Minister: Our principal task now is to make a success of the Kennedy Round of tariff negotiations and so lower the tariff barrier between the two groups. We for our part will do all we can to achieve this. For the rest, we shall try to harmonise policy where we usefully can through the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Western European Union and the Council of Europe, as well as through bilateral discussions.

Mr. Marten: While thanking the Prime Minister for that reply, which I will study, may I ask him to say whether he would dissociate himself from the remarks of his hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke (Mr. Donnelly) and his hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Mr. Wyatt)—whom even the Economist described at "woolly"—to the effect that we should sign the Treaty of Rome on the dotted line? Would he, secondly, say what practical, functional steps the Government are taking to build a bridge between E.F.T.A. and the Common Market?

The Prime Minister: I made it clear last week that there is no question whatever of our being invited or having any opportunity for discussing at present the question of adherence to the Treaty of Rome or in other ways to join the E.E.C. I have stated on a number of occasions the conditions which we would insist must be provided for there to be any question of negotiation. To answer the hon. Gentleman's second point—which is a very important one—I hope, in meetings I shall be having in Bonn, Paris and elsewhere in the next few months, to see whether there are any other means, apart from those which I


have given in my Answer, of building a bridge between E.F.T.A. and the E.E.C.

Mr. Grimond: While it is apparent that we cannot just sign the Treaty of Rome without consultation with our E.F.T.A. partners—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—is it not the case that if the Tory Party is serious in its new-found desire to get into the Common Market, we must accept the principles behind the Treaty of Rome? Does the right hon. Gentleman intend to have any consultations with our E.F.T.A. partners as to a general approach to the Six to see, if an opportunity should arise in future, how far we could make a joint application to join?

The Prime Minister: While welcoming the fact that the Liberal Party accepts the first of the five conditions which we laid down, the right hon. Gentleman will understand if I have to say that I cannot answer for the Conservative Party in answer to his first point.

Hon. Members: Really.

The Prime Minister: I am not quite sure who could, either. To answer the right hon. Gentleman's second point, we are certainly prepared to discuss this question with our colleagues in E.F.T.A. There have been a number of interesting proposals put forward from all sides of the House during the last two or three years and it may be that the chance of one or two of them becoming more effective may be greater now than it was.

Mr. Bellenger: Are we to understand from my right hon. Friend's statement that he sees no possibility whatever of our entering into any negotiations with the Common Market and that, therefore, it must be a matter between E.F.T.A. and the Common Market countries?

The Prime Minister: From the point of view of British entry, I should have thought that it is generally agreed on all sides of the House that there is not at present any proposition by which we could enter into such negotiations. If the situation were to change, then I have made quite clear the conditions we would want to see fulfilled before there could be negotiations.

MINISTER OF HOUSING AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT (SPEECH)

The following Question stood upon the Order Paper:

Mr. WILLIAM HAMILTON: To ask the Prime Minister, if the public speech made at Stoke on 6th February by the Minister of Housing and Local Government on the subject of expenditure on armaments represents the policy of Her Majesty's Government.

Mr. Speaker: Mr. Hamilton. Question No. 5.

Mr. Hamilton: indicated dissent.

Hon. Members: Go on. Ask it.

Mr. Hamilton: indicated dissent. [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Too much enthusiasm frustrates my efforts to secure progress.

Hon. Members: Ask it.

Mr. Hamilton: indicated dissent.

The Prime Minister: I regret that. I have a very good Answer.

An Hon. Member: Who fixed it?

Later—

Sir C. Taylor: On a point of order. Would it not be possible, with your permission and that of the House, Mr. Speaker, for the Prime Minister to answer Question Q5 which he has expressed himself as itching to answer?

Mr. Speaker: However irritating, the answer cannot be given now.

GOVERNOR OF BANK OF ENGLAND (CONSULTATIONS)

Mr. Ridsdale: asked the Prime Minister if he will have consultations with the Governor of the Bank of England, Lord Cromer, on the problems of the national economy.

Mr. William Hamilton: asked the Prime Minister what recent consultations he has had with the Governor of the Bank of England on the problems of the national economy.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: asked the Prime Minister if he will review the procedure for consultation between Her Majesty's Government and the Governor of the Bank of England with regard to the planning of economic policy.

The Prime Minister: Both my right hon. Friend the Chancellor and I made the Government's position on this question clear in speeches last weekend. We welcome advice from any quarter, particularly from those who have the right and duty to give it, as the Governor of the Bank of England has. The Government agree with him that the total expenditure of the country, public and private, capital and current, should not exceed the resources that can be made available. Within that total, the division between public and private expenditure is for the Government to decide, subject to the final authority of this House. On consultation, therefore, I see no need to change the existing arrangements which provide for informal consultation whenever necessary.

Mr. Ridsdale: In view of the wise advice given by the Governor of the Bank of England, will the Prime Minister do everything he can to see that money can grow in the pockets of the individual rather than in the coffers of the State? [Interruption.] Is the right hon. Gentleman really satisfied with the return on capital in the nationalised industries, which have had capital investment of £4,500 million over the last 10 years; that is, in the nationalised coal, gas and electricity industries?

The Prime Minister: I was interested to hear from the hon. Gentleman that Gladstonian doctrine of the fructification of private expenditure. I would have expected to hear that from the Liberal bench, but nevertheless we got it. The advice given by the Governor has been given by him and his predecessor to successive Chancellors of the Exchequer, but in fact I think that the position has always been in this House, if I may now quote Disraeli, that expenditure depends on policy, and the Estimates presented by the Government to the House earlier this week are the result of policies and of commitments which have been entered into over a period of years. If any hon. Member has really valuable suggestions to make for reducing expenditure, he

must call in question some of the policies which, indeed, all parties in the House have accepted.

Mr. Hamilton: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, in so far as Lord Cromer was urging the Government to slash military expenditure overseas, he was talking jolly good, sound sense, but that in so far as he was talking about slashing home expenditure, my right hon. Friend may as well appoint Ted Hill to the post?

The Prime Minister: I hope that, despite that, my hon. Friend will re-table Question No. 5, which I am really itching to answer. As to his present supplementary on Question No. 7, I think that the whole House will agree, and all of us have said this in the debates on defence, that it is essential to get down to a minimum overseas expenditure, because it is not only a drain on Government expenditure; it is also a severe drain on our balance of payments.
As to home public expenditure, the situation was clearly explained by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer on Monday. We have to see that the total call on resources matches the resources which can be made available. As between public and private, it is a matter of policy for the House to decide now and in successive Supply debates.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: Is the Prime Minister aware that the views expressed by the Governor of the Bank of England correspond precisely with those of our international creditors and that if he disregards these views he will have considerable difficulty in renewing the international credits which have been necessitated by the Government's mishandling of our economic affairs?

The Prime Minister: I did not quite catch every word, but I will do my best. The position is, as was stated very clearly by the Governor, that we faced a very serious situation last autumn on our balance of payments. The House has many times debated the responsibility for that state of affairs. As to the present level of expenditure, as my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer made clear, very, very large expenditure commitments were entered into by the party opposite when they were in power,


which we have inherited. These were set out in a whole series of election promises, and although we have shown the very greatest effectiveness in pruning figures wherever we could, there is inevitably a very big increase this year.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: The Prime Minister and the Government may be pruning now, but is it not true to say that all the Estimates which we made for programmes for the future were topped up by him at the General Election?

The Prime Minister: What I do remember of the General Election is that the right hon. Gentleman on that occasion said that his programmes have been costed. I do not know who costed them, or whether the right hon. Gentleman had a hand in it himself. All I can say is that when we came to cost them on their promises we found that they were far in excess of the figures published in their White Paper.

ECONOMIC PLANNING COUNCILS

The following Question stood upon the Order Paper:

Mr. MAPP: To ask the First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs if he will make a statement about progress in setting up the Government's regional economic planning machinery.

The First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs (Mr. George Brown): May I say how glad I am to see right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite in their places?
With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I should like to say, in answer to Question No. 69, that I have set up Economic Planning Councils for the North-West, the West Midlands and the Northern Regions.
I am glad to be able to tell the House that Mr. Charles Carter, the Vice-Chancellor of Lancaster University, Mr. J. A. Hunt, a director of Hymatic Engineering Ltd., of Redditch, and Mr. Dan Smith, Leader of Newcastle City Council, have accepted my invitation to serve as chairmen of these three councils.
I am circulating the names of the council members and their terms of reference in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
My right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Scotland and for Wales are announcing the composition of the Scottish and Welsh Economic Planning Councils today.

Mr. Heath: May I express to the First Secretary of State the very warm welcome of the House on his having come back here and also thank him for coming to the House to answer Question No. 69, which is of a non-controversial kind?
As the right hon. Gentleman has announced that he intended to set up some regional councils, naturally we are glad that he is making progress with them and we shall study the formation of the councils with care.
May I reserve my comments on the first two names? As to the third name, may I ask the First Secretary why it was found necessary to appoint such a controversial political figure to be Chairman of the Northern Region Council as Mr. Dan Smith, who declared, as recently as last week, that
The democratic vote is no way to get the sort of changes we need in the North.
Is this the sort of person to preside over a council such as this?

Mr. Brown: On the right hon. Gentleman's first carefully prepared comment, may I point out that I got it in first? The interesting thing is that the only person who, in the mind of the right hon. Gentleman, is controversial is a Labour man.

Mr. Mapp: May I thank my right hon. Friend the First Secretary of State for his drive and initiative, such as we have not seen for many years? May I ask him two specific questions? First, when will the initial meeting be held of the North-West Council? Secondly, would he care, through the OFFICIAL REPORT or otherwise, to set out the constitution and basic purposes of the councils?

Mr. Brown: The OFFICIAL REPORT for today will carry the terms of reference. That, added to what I said when we originally debated this matter, shows the whole purpose of the regional councils.


I shall also announce today the names of the chairmen of the economic planning boards. My intention and hope is that the councils will meet within a few weeks from now and will thereafter start working in association with the boards. I am certain that the under-used regions of England will be very pleased that this is happening.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: How many of the members of the councils whom the First Secretary of State has appointed have been appointed on the suggestion of the local authorities in the regions concerned?

Mr. Brown: I think that rather more than one-third have been put forward by local authorities. The others are divided between industrialists, trade unionists, universities and people who know about other aspects of regional life. Unless the right hon. Gentleman, like his right hon. Friend the Member for Bexley (Mr. Heath), is so biased as to believe that one must never be a Labour man, he will find that these councils fully represent life in the regions.

Mr. Popplewell: Is my right hon. Friend aware how much we on this side of the House appreciate the energy he has shown in establishing these regional councils? Is he aware how much we believe that the nation will benefit as a consequence of the devolution of central power, thus allowing regions to develop themselves? If he further aware how much we welcome the fact that he has not yielded to the smear campaign that has been conducted for so long by hon. Members opposite against "Danny" Smith, the Chairman of the new Northern Economic Planning Council? Is my right hon. Friend aware that this man is of outstanding ability, and that we are delighted that my right hon. Friend has made this appointment?

Mr. R. W. Elliott: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the North-East Development Council, in its most recent publication, said that 1964 was the best ever year for industrial development in the north-east of England? Is he aware that this, in the opinion of many people in the area, is due to the energy and the decisions, based on a spirit of co-operation and attraction of the previous Government? Is he aware that in consequence

appointment of this new council as completely unnecessary, and certainly in terms of its chairman as completely unsound. many people in the North-East see the

Mr. Brown: The answer to that last point must be, "No, Sir." On the others, let hon. Members wait until they see the results of 1965 and 1966.

Mr. Rhodes: Is my right hon. Friend aware that appreciation of the previous few years' industrial developments in the North-East is shown by the fact that the democratic wishes referred to by the hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, North (Mr. R. W. Elliott) led last October to practically every Conservative Member of Parliament in the North-East being out of the House—

Dame Irene Ward: What about me?

Mr. Rhodes: —with one or two very noticeable exceptions.
Is my right hon. Friend also aware that the kind of cryptic remarks which have just been made by hon. Members opposite are designed to destroy this machinery before it has started?

Mr. Brown: I am much obliged to my hon. Friend. I also am quite clear that there are one or two exceptions to be got rid of next time.

Mr. Gibson-Watt: Why is it proper to make a statement on the regional planning for England in a statement in the House and, at the same time, answer a Question about Wales in the form of a Written Answer? Is Wales thought to be so inferior to England? The right hon. Gentleman seems to be shaking his head. I hope that he takes this matter seriously. What are his responsibilities for regional planning in Wales? Has he executive responsibility, or does that belong to the Secretary of State for Wales?

Mr. Brown: That seems a little pointless. [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."] I am answering, but the great privilege in the House is that one can ask questions one's own way and one can also answer them in one's own way. The answer is that the Secretary of State for Wales is responsible for Wales.

Mr. Gibson-Watt: Executively?

Mr. Brown: Yes, Sir. He is responsible. I am not responsible in Wales. My right hon. Friend is responsible for


the Welsh Planning Council. [HON. MEMBERS: "Where is he?"] As to why I answer orally and my right hon. Friend by Written Answer, it was not thought that it would be for the convenience of the House to have three oral statements. It was thought that most of the questions could conveniently arise on my statement.

Mr. Speaker: Sir Alec Douglas-Home. Business question.

Dame Irene Ward: On a point of order. Owing to the appointment of Mr. Dan Smith, and the unsatisfactory situation generally, I beg to give notice that I shall raise this matter on the Adjournment.

Following are the terms of reference of the Councils:

(i) To assist in the formulation of a regional plan, having regard to the best use of the region's resources;
(ii) To advise on the steps necessary for implementing the regional plan on the basis of information and assessments provided by the Economic Planning Board;
(iii) To advise on the regional implications of national economic policies.

Following are the members of the Councils:

NORTH-WEST REGION

E. G. W. Allen, E.R.D., Director, Lancashire and Merseyside Industrial Development Association.

S. Asbury, J.P., North-West Area Secretary, Clerical and Administrative Workers Union.

R. A. Barnett, J.P., Divisional Officer, Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers.

J. K. Boynton, M.C., LL.B., L.M., T.P.I., Clerk of Cheshire County Council.

U. A. Coates, C.B.E., B.Arch., F.R.I.B.A., Lancashire County Council Planning Officer.

Sir Leonard Cooke, O.B.E., J.P., President, Co-operative Wholesale Society.

C. A. Dove, C.B.E., E.R.D., M.Inst.T., General Manager, Mersey Docks and Harbour Board.

R. Foulkes, J.P., County Councillor, Lancashire County Council.

J. Goldberg, M.A., B.C.L. (Oxon.), Chairman, Manchester and Salford Council of Social Service.

J. Golding, J.P., Councillor, Crewe Borough Council.

J. Gormley, J.P., Lancashire Area Secretary, National Union of Mineworkers.

R. Hoggarth, Alderman, Nelson Borough Council.

J. F. Humphreys, J.P., Chairman, W. & J. Foster Limited.

Professor R. H. Kantorowich, B.Arch. (Witwatersrand), A.R.I.B.A., A.M.T.P.I., Professor of Town and Country Planning, Manchester University.

J. B. Lancaster, B.Sc., M.I.Mech.E., M.I.E.E., Director, Unilever Merseyside Limited.

Professor W. J. M. MacKenzie, C.B.E., Professor of Government, Manchester University.

W. L. Mather, O.B.E., M.C., T.D., D.L., A.D.C., M.A.M.I., Mech.E., Chairman, Mather and Platt Limited.

P. Monkhouse, Northern Editor of The Guardian and Member of the Peak Park Planning Board.

M. D. Oliphant, M.B.E., T.D., Director, Tate and Lyle Limited.

M. P. Pariser, M.A. (Hon.), Alderman, Manchester City Council.

R. F. Richardson, M.I.E.E., Chairman, North-West Electricity Board.

W. H. Sefton, Alderman, Liverpool City Council.

D. G. Stokes, T.D., M.I., Mech.E., M.S.A.E., Chairman, Standard Triumph International Ltd.

J. Lewis Womersley, C.B.E., F.R.I.B.A. (dist. Town Planning), M.T.P.I., Architect.

L. T. Wright, C.B.E., General Secretary, Amalgamated Weavers Association.

WEST MIDLANDS REGION

R. P. S. Bache, Chairman and Managing Director of George Salter & Co. Ltd.

L. Hargreaves Beare, F.C.A., Deputy Chairman and Managing Director of Needles Industries Group Ltd.

A. E. Bennett, J. P., Alderman, Stoke-on-Trent City Council.

R. H. Bennett, M.A., Director, Herefordshire Rural Community Council.

W. J. Brimley, Regional Secretary, National Federation of Building Trade Operatives.

J. B. Butterworth, M.A., J.P., Vice-Chancellor, University of Warwick.

Sir E. M. Clayson, Kt., F.C.A., Chairman and Managing Director, Birmingham Post and Mail Limited.

S. R. Cresswell, M.B.E., J.P., Divisional Organiser, Amalgamated Engineering Union.

D. E. C. Eversley, B.Sc., Ph.D., Reader in Social History, Birmingham University.

G. C. Godber, C.B.E., Clerk of Shropshire County Council.

J. M. C. Higgs, Chairman, Worcestershire County Council.

A. G. Ling, B.A. (Arch.), F.R.I.B.A., M.T.P.I., Professor of Architecture, University of Nottingham; Joint Architect, University of Warwick.

F. N. Lloyd, Chairman, F. H. Lloyd & Co. Ltd., Darleston.

F. V. Magness, C.B.E., Councillor, Willenhall Urban District Council.

Earl of March and Kinrara, Chairman, Rugby and District Council of Social Service.

G. W. Newman, Chairman, Staffordshire County Council.

G. B. Norton, Alderman, Dudley Town Council.

W. Perrins, M.B.E., District Secretary and National Council Member, National Union of General and Municipal Workers.

F. L. Price, Lord Mayor of Birmingham.

D. M. Sinclair, C.B.E., M.I.Mech.E., M.Inst.T., General Manager, Midland Motor Omnibus Company Limited.

C. H. Urwin, Regional Secretary, Transport and General Workers Union.

Sir P. F. R. Venables, Kt., Ph.D., B.Sc., F.R.I.C., Principal, College of Advanced Technology, Birmingham.

I. J. Wallace, O.B.E., Director, Massey-Ferguson Holdings Ltd.

H. Watton, J.P., Alderman, Birmingham City Council.

A. J. Waugh, Alderman, Coventry City Council.

NORTHERN REGION

J. G. Boothby, Leader of Middlesbrough County Borough Council.

G. R. Chetwynd, Director North East Development Council.

Prof. D. G. Christopherson, O.B.E., F.R.S., Vice-Chancellor Durham University.

I. B. Clark, Chairman, Heavy Organic Chemicals Division, Imperial Chemical Industries.

R. A. Cookson, O.B.E., Acting Chairman, Consett Iron Co.

A. Cunningham, Chairman of Durham County Council.

L. Y. Dent, O.B.E., Farmer and Alderman of Northumberland County Council.

D. F. Edwards, Area Secretary Electrical Trades Union, District Secretary Confederation of Shipbuilding and Electrical Unions.

Dr. H. M. Finneston, Managing Director, International Research and Development Company, Ltd.

H. Glaister, Mayor of Carlisle County Borough Council.

J. W. Harper, Regional Officer, National Federation of Building Trades Operatives.

R. Ibison, Managing Director, Hawthorn Leslie (Shipbuilders) Ltd.

L. Jacobson, Chairman and Managing Director, Jackson the Tailor, Ltd., Chairman of Montague Burton, Ltd.

R. J. L. Jackson, O.B.E., Chairman, North Yorkshire Moors National Parks Committee; Chairman of Executive Committee, Yorkshire Tourist Authority; Alderman of North Riding County Council.

Earl of Lonsdale, Landowner.

W. G. McClelland, Managing Director Laws Stores.

J. C. Moore, M.B.E., District Secretary for West Cumberland, Transport and General Workers Union.

W. Nunn, Member of Shildon Urban District Council and past Chairman.

B. Pendlington, J.P., District Secretary and Executive Member, National Union of Blast Furnacemen, Ore Miners, Coke Workers and Kindred Trades.

Dr. W. Reid, C.B.E., Chairman of Northumberland and Durham Divisional Board, National Coal Board.

S. A. Sadler Forster, C.B.E., F.C.A., hon. D.C.L., Chairman, Industrial Estates Management Corporation for England.

F. Schon, Chairman and Managing Director, Marchon Products Ltd.; Chairman, Cumberland Development Council.

P. F. Scott, Chairman of Provincial Insurance Company Ltd.

C. Spence, Member of Darlington County Borough Council.

J. Steel, C.B.E., Chairman and Managing Director, Steel and Company.

J. Westoll, M.A., J.P., Chairman of Cumberland County Council.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: May I ask the Leader of the House whether he will state the business of the House for next week?

The Lord President of the Council (Mr. Herbert Bowden): Yes, Sir. The business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY, 1ST MARCH—Supply [7th Allotted Day]: Committee stage of the Civil Estimates and Defence (Central) Estimate Vote on Account 1965–66, when a debate will arise on Civil Airlines.
TUESDAY, 2ND MARCH—Second Reading of the Firearms Bill.
Remaining stages of the War Damage Bill.
WEDNESDAY, 3RD MARCH and THURSDAY, 4TH MARCH—Debate on Defence, on a Government Motion inviting the House to approve the White Paper (Command No. 2592).
FRIDAY, 5TH MARCH—Private Members' Motions.
MONDAY, 8TH MARCH—The proposed business will be: Supply [8th Allotted Day]: Army Estimates, 1965–66, will be considered in Committee on Vote A.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: Will the right hon. Gentleman arrange for two hours' suspension on the rule on the Army Estimates on Monday, 8th March?

Mr. Bowden: Yes, Sir, that is customary.

Mr. William Hamilton: Has my right hon. Friend—

Hon. Members: Ask Question No. Q5.

Mr. Hamilton: Another day.
Has my right hon. Friend seen Motion No. 107 on the Order Paper on the question of abortion law reform, which is supported by hon. Members from both sides of the House?
[That this House views with concern the present unsatisfactory state of the law in relation to abortion, due to difficulties of interpretation of the existing law; deplores a situation in which pregnant


women who can afford sympathetic and skilled treatment can obtain an abortion on health grounds, while those who lack the means to seek proper advice are driven to take desperate and often harmful or fatal measures; and therefore calls for revision of the Offences Against the Person Act, 1861, so as to clarify and liberalise the law with a view to reducing the horror and danger of illegal abortions.]
Can my right hon. Friend give me an undertaking that this matter might be considered in the same way as the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Bill, namely, that a Private Member's Bill might be given facilities by the Government, particularly since there are many thousands of much more worthy citizens involved in this matter than there are in the Murder Bill?

Mr. Bowden: I appreciate the interest in this subject, but I cannot promise any time in the immediate future. My right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary is answering a Question in March. Perhaps we had better await the reply which he is making on that occasion.

Sir D. Glover: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman when may we expect a debate, or time to be allowed for a debate, on Motion No. 90, on South Vietnam, in the names of some of his hon. Friends?
[That this House, realising that British policy in regard to Vietnam is based upon acceptance in principle of the 1954 Geneva Declaration, that United States policy springs from non-acceptance of that Declaration, and that therefore on this point the objectives of the two countries cannot be the same, expresses the urgent hope that the British Government will take an early initiative in order to bring about a cease-fire and a political settlement which is essential to the reestablishment of peace.]
There is a great deal of concern in the country over events in South-East Asia, and as quite a lot of Government policy is involved in this may I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he does not think that an early date should be devoted to the subject?

Mr. Bowden: I am genuinely concerned to have a debate on foreign affairs as soon as it can be arranged, as I said

last week. The trouble is that we are running at the moment into spring Supply and nine or 10 days during the next three or four weeks are at the disposal of the Opposition. This is normal at this time of the year.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Can my right hon. Friend provide time to debate the important and imaginative Government statement on the future of the arts?

Mr. Bowden: We had better see how we go on. This Report has only just been published.

Mr. Grimond: Am I right in thinking that there will be no legislation concerning regional development? In view of the statement made today by the First Secretary, together with other promised statements, will the right hon. Gentleman consider finding time to debate this subject in due course?

Mr. Bowden: I think that in due course we should have a debate, but I cannot promise anything immediately.

Mr. Sydney Silverman: On the question of the Motion on South Vietnam, will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that I was perfectly content with the answer which he gave last Thursday to my question about a debate on foreign affairs?
Has my right hon. Friend's attention been drawn to the Motion on the Order Paper in the names of some of my hon. Friends and myself on the complaint about privilege made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Mr. Warbey)?
[That, in the opinion of this House, the publications of which the hon. Member for Ashfield complained on Monday, 22nd February, 1965, are a deliberate and unequivocal direct attack upon the hon. Member's honour, good faith, integrity and loyalty in the discharge of his parliamentary duties, and by implication also upon those of the many hon. Members on all sides of the House who have from time to time paid visits to foreign countries, some of them not recognised by Her Majesty's Government, in pursuit of their duties and obligations as Members and that this House therefore considers that the question whether the said publications do in fact constitute a contempt of Parliament should be considered and reported upon by the Committee of Privileges.]
Does my right hon. Friend think that some special time—it would not require very much—could be granted by the Government so that the House can express its opinion on that Motion?

Mr. Bowden: I have been giving this some thought since I saw the Motion on the Order Paper this morning. In the first place, for the benefit of some hon. Gentlemen, perhaps on both sides of the House—new Members who are not au fait with our procedure—it should be clearly understood that the appearance of this Motion on the Order Paper is no reflection whatever on the action of the Chair in declaring that this matter was not prima facie a breach of privilege.
On the Motion itself, I have read carefully the article referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Mr. Warbey) and there is no doubt that it implied that he has, or had, associations with Communist Front organisations. I think that the House has a right, as my hon. Friend is of opinion that his honour and integrity have been impugned, to voice its opinion on this and to decide whether it feels that the matter should be referred to the Committee of Privileges. There is no immediate need, because the Committee of Privileges has a case before it at present.
I intend to provide a small amount of time within the reasonably near future for the House to debate this matter, but I remind the House that on that occasion it will not be a Government or an Opposition matter. This is a matter for the House as such.

Sir Rolf Dudley Williams: May I draw the attention of the Leader of the House to the Motion in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeenshire, West (Mr. Hendry) to be discussed tomorrow week, to ensure that the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Bill is brought back to the Floor of the House for its Committee stage? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, when the Bill was originally discussed, it was strongly felt by both retentionists and abolitionists that its Committee stage should be taken on the Floor of the House, and will he on this occasion ensure that the Patronage Secretary does not put the Whips on in order to

send the Bill back again to Standing Committee?
[To call attention to the need to debate the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Bill in Committee of the whole House; and to move, That Standing Committee C be discharged from further consideration of the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Bill and that the Bill be committed to a Committee of the whole House.]

Mr. Bowden: I notice that the Motion is down for discussion a week tomorrow, and I hope to be in my place to take part in the debate on that occasion. I cannot possibly forecast what the result of the debate is likely to be.

Mr. Heath: May I press the Leader of the House further on the answer which he gave a few moments ago in which, as I understood him, he was contemplating that, when Mr. Speaker has ruled that there is no prima facie case and the House itself does not wish to take the matter as one of privilege, it is, nevertheless, right to give time to any hon. Member who feels that his honour has been in some way impugned by a newspaper report? If this were right, I suggest that, during the Common Market negotiations, I might have been demanding two hours a day from the House.

Mr. Bowden: As I see the position, when Mr. Speaker rules that a matter is not prima facie a breach of privilege, and ought not to receive precedence over the Orders of the Day, he is on that occasion ruling that it is not a matter which should be discussed then, and he usually says—I cannot recall whether he did on this occasion—that it is a matter for the House. The only way the House can refer to it is by putting down a Motion.
As I have said, I have looked at the Motion and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Mr. Warbey) feels that his honour has been impugned—I should deal with it in the same way as regards any other Member—I think that a short time ought to be provided for him to defend himself.

Mr. Iain Macleod: I am not objecting to the proposal which the right hon. Gentleman has made, but will he take this as a very serious point? Does he realise that, quite apart from any


individual issues, there is here concerned a very important matter of the freedom of the Press? The whole of the Press has always thought, rightly or wrongly—[Interruption.] I am putting a question on business.

Mr. Sydney Silverman: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Since this is a matter of privilege, and since, if there has been any breach of privilege whatever, as to which I express no opinion, it is the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Enfield, West (Mr. Iain Macleod) who committed it, ought he not, in compliance with the normal traditions of the House, to refrain from commenting on it until the House has had an opportunity to express a view?

Mr. Speaker: The precise position is that the Leader of the House has said that he proposes to provide some time for discussion of the Motion. In these circumstances, if the House will take my advice, it will not attempt to discuss the matter now. No doubt, considerations which make it thought that that course is undesirable can be raised when we come to the debate.

Mr. Iain Macleod: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Irrespective of the matter concerned, we are discussing the allocation of business. The point I wish to put to the Leader of the House is that such great issues are involved—I do not go into them—that it must be wrong to assume that this is a matter which can be disposed of in a short time. It is a most serious and important matter, and that was the question, strictly on the allocation of time, which I take to be in order, that I wished to put to the Leader of the House.

Mr. Speaker: I was diverted by the other considerations raised. It is, of course, undeniable that that is in order.

Mr. Bowden: I was under the impression that the right hon. Gentleman and some of his colleagues felt that this ought not to be debated. We are now being told that it ought to be debated at length. I am in the hands of the House on this. All I say is that I think it is a matter which ought to be looked at, and we cannot do other than decide whether, in the view of the House, it ought to go to the Committee.

Mr. Hooson: As Wales now has a Secretary of State and, from today, has an Economic Planning Council, does the Leader of the House intend to provide more time for debating Welsh affairs on the Floor of the House, or in the Welsh Grand Committee this Session?

Mr. Bowden: There is the normal arrangement for debating Welsh affairs on the Floor of the House and in the Welsh Grand Committee. We might, perhaps, have discussions about it, but I cannot promise very much more time on the Floor of the House.

Mr. Charles Morris: Has my right hon. Friend noted early day Motion No. 77, signed by several of my hon. Friends and myself relating to the doctrinaire, repetitive and monstrous blocking by certain hon. Members opposite of a Private Bill promoted by the Manchester Corporation? Will he have discussions with the Chairman of Ways and Means with a view to facilitating an early debate on this subject?
[That this House, while recognising the right of an individual Member to object to Private Bills promoted by responsible local authorities, regrets the actions of Members of Her Majesty's Opposition, whose indiscriminate use of the precedure of objection, particularly in regard to the Manchester Corporation Bill, can have deleterious effects on the health, welfare, and industrial well-being of the city and its citizens.]

Mr. Bowden: It is most unusual for the Leader of the House to interfere with the selection by the Chairman of Ways and Means of Bills which come before the House or in any way to deal with them. All I am asked to do is to provide time when he wants time on the Floor. I think that we should be very careful, whatever we may feel about the procedure on Private Bills, about altering the precedure unless the Select Committee on Procedure should recommend otherwise.

Mr. Ridsdale: May I draw the attention of the Leader of the House to the Motion on the transfer of the rate burden? May we have an early debate on this subject, because the failure to transfer some of the burden from the local authorities to the national Exchequer is affecting local people very greatly indeed?
[That this House deplores the delay of the Government in bringing about an early transfer of at least part of the educational rate from the local authorities to the central Exchequer; draws the attention of the House to the burden this is placing on the retired and others, especially in areas with little industry; and urges the Government to take urgent action to remedy this.]

Mr. Bowden: The Allen Report is being made available today and the Government's review of local authority finance is at present taking place. Perhaps we had better wait to have both reports together until we have a debate.

Sir D. Renton: Without going into the merits of the matter, may I refer once more to the complaint of the hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Warbey)? Could the Leader of the House tell us whether, in deciding that time should be given to this matter, it was he himself or the hon. Member who judged that the complaint required time to be given? Secondly, if it was the Leader of the House who decided it, will he say whether he did so as Leader of the House or as Chairman of the Committee of Privileges?

Mr. Bowden: I rather resent the implication there that my hon. Friend has approached me to give time. I have not discussed this with him at all. In my view, this is an occasion when time should be given. It is a decision which I have to make. It may be a wrong one, but that is my decision.

Mr. Sydney Silverman: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that I carefully refrained from approaching him in any way before putting the Motion on the Order Paper and that I was prompted to consider the advisability of putting it down because of what Mr. Speaker said in giving his Ruling against a prima facie case?

Mr. Speaker: Despite his great perception, I very much doubt the purpose of asking the Leader of the House about the undisclosed motives of the hon. Gentleman in that matter.

Mr. Warbey: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) used the words, "the hon. Member", but he did not say which

hon. Member. For the sake of the record of the proceedings of the House, should not the right hon. and learned Gentleman indicate to which hon. Member he was referring?

Sir D. Renton: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I did, in the early part of my question, refer to the "hon. Member for Ashfield". When I referred, at the end of my question, to the "hon. Member", I naturally still meant the hon. Member for Ashfield. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House has now given an explanation of the position and I fully accept his statement.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I would be greately assisted if the House would help me to get on with business questions.

Sir G. Nicholson: Does not the Leader of the House agree that questions of privilege are matters for the House and are not party political questions? Does not his action in himself moving the reference to the Committee of Privileges in a recent case, instead of leaving it to the hon. Member who raised the question, rather infringe upon that tradition?

Mr. Speaker: Order. The practice adopted the other day cannot be the subject matter of a business question this day.

Mr. Robert Cooke: Will the Leader of the House bear in mind that hardly another hon. Member would share the views of his hon. Friends about the Government White Paper on the Arts, launched yesterday with such a blaze of misleading publicity and containing, as it does, a considerable number of highly political attacks on various individuals? May we have an assurance that we can have an early debate on the White Paper, and that a full day will be allocated?

Mr. Bowden: I have already said that I think we should wait a little while for this one.

Mr. Grimond: I apologise for returning to the Motion on privilege, but I understand that the Motion asks that the matter be referred to the Committee of Privileges. I do not wish to embarrass the right hon. Gentleman, who has a dual capacity in this matter, but am I


right in thinking that the House would be entitled to dispose of a matter of privilege, one way or the other, without referring it to the Committee? Will the proposed debate be conducted in such a way that, if the House so desired, it could dispose of the matter in the House and that it will not be bound simply to decide whether or not the issue should go to the Committee of Privileges?

Mr. Bowden: This is a matter for the House. The Motion would refer the matter to the Committee of Privileges, but it would be in order for the House to dispose of the matter when it debated it.

Mr. Higgins: Are we to understand that, after the delay in publishing the Allen Committee's Report, there is to be yet further delay while we await the report of another Government Committee before we have the opportunity to debate this important issue? Are not the two points quite separate? Is not the one concerned with the division of the rates burden between different parts of the country and the other with expenditure as divided between the Exchequer and the local authorities? Can we have an early debate on the Allen Committee's Report without waiting still further for the next report?

Mr. Bowden: The Allen Report has only been laid before the House today. If the Government's own review of local authority finance takes a very long time, perhaps there will be something in what the hon. Gentleman has said. I would prefer to look at this matter again.

Sir G. Nicholson: Will the right hon. Gentleman undertake that, on all future occasions when a question of privilege arises, the decision should be left to the free vote of the House?

Mr. Bowden: I would have thought that this is a matter for a particular occasion. This is something that we should look at. There is nothing unusual in the Leader of the House moving that a matter be referred to the Committee of Privileges. That was my view last week. It has been done very often in the past. It certainly happened under the previous Administration. But, of course it need not always be so.

Mr. Chataway: As the Secretary of State for Education and Science was mistaken last week in saying that the minor works programme for schools is to be increased—it is, admittedly, to be reduced by £2 million—and although this was, no doubt, a genuine mistake, will the right hon. Gentleman consider, in view of the disappointment caused by the decision, giving time to the Motion on the Order Paper standing in my name and the names of some of my right hon. and hon. Friends?
[That this House notes the termination by the Government of the scheme whereby local education authorities enjoyed discretion to proceed with improvements to school buildings where the cost of the improvement was less than £2,000; regrets that this action by the Government will mean considerably less being spent on school building improvement in 1965–66 than in 1964–65, and will also result in unnecessary administrative delays in the commencement of important improvement projects; and shares the deep concern already expressed by teachers, local education authorities and chief education officers throughout the country as to the damaging effect that the Government's action will have on the programme to modernise schools.]

Mr. Bowden: I cannot promise time for a debate.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: May I draw the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to the Motion in my name and the names of some of my hon. Friends concerning the refusal by the Minister of Transport to receive a delegation? Despite the reply that the right hon. Gentleman gave to a somewhat similar question two weeks ago, the Minister has received no deputations on this question. Moreover, at the meeting of the deputation with officials, the officials were so ill-informed on the matter that it was a total waste of time. This matter does really need a debate in the House unless the Minister of Transport will receive a delegation of this nature.
[That this House, being aware that, despite the statement of the Leader of the House on Thursday, 11th February, no Minister has received any delegation from Devon County Council and Teignmouth Urban Council to receive representations


concerning the redevelopment of the war-damaged centre of Teignmouth, calls upon the Minister of Transport to receive such a delegation.]

Mr. Bowden: I have checked my words on this point. I did not say that the Minister had received a delegation. It was, of course, officials who received the delegation on 23rd December. I will draw the attention of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport to the hon. Gentleman's question.

Mr. Bessell: Has the right hon. Gentleman seen the Motion standing in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Devon, North (Mr. Thorpe) and my name concerning the latest proposals under the Beeching plan and the anxiety felt in the South-West and many other remote regions? Will he allow time to debate this urgent matter?
[That this House, conscious of the vital significance of railways in any plan for regional development, notes with concern many of the proposals contained in Dr. Beeching's latest plan and their likely effect upon regional plans, and calls for a debate as a matter of urgency.]

Mr. Bowden: We must give a little time for Lord Hinton to look at this problem before we debate it in the House.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOUNDARIES NORTHAMPTON (CONDUCT OF HOME SECRE- TARY)

4.6 p.m.

Mr. Peter Thorneycroft: I beg to move,
That this House deplores the action of the Secretary of State for the Home Department in yielding to Labour Party political pressure concerning ward boundaries in Northampton and in reversing his decision to accept the report of an independent commissioner who had conducted a full public inquiry.
The Motion clearly affects the Home Secretary in a matter of importance concerning his office, but I would like to make it perfectly plain at the outset that it is not my intention in what I have to say to use any words impugning his honour or integrity in a matter of this kind. All of us who know him in the House, on both sides, will realise, I think, that no Motion of that kind and no speech of that kind could really be made.
What I propose to do, however, is to question the right hon. and learned Gentleman's judgment and it is a part of my case that he has been guilty of a serious error of judgment in an important matter of Home Office administration and that he has shown some weakness under what, undoubtedly, was strong political pressure. On any account, the events that he set in train are, I think—and I believe that he would agree—remarkable in character.
To set up a second inquiry into ward boundaries because the result of the first one was not to the liking of the Labour Party is certainly a departure from the standards which the right hon. and learned Gentleman has normally used in exercising what must be regarded as a quasi-judicial function. To postpone elections, including by-elections, in the borough, thus freezing a Labour majority and disfranchising not only new electors who might be brought in, but all existing electors—Liberals, Conservatives and Socialists alike—in the borough over a period of months is, at least in our view, something of an abuse of the normal procedures of democracy.
I say at once that the issues with which we are concerned here go, of course, in their implication a good deal wider than the ward boundaries in Northampton. They touch, in an important particular,


on the policy and practice of the Home Office. The reviews of Parliamentary or local government boundaries are a matter of concern to everybody in the House of Commons and in the country. Indeed, many of them are in prospect all over the country. The practice followed has been hallowed by tradition and the sudden intervention by the senior Secretary of State, when that intervention is specifically made upon political grounds, must be a matter of grave import to the House of Commons. It must have fairly far-reaching consequences for the future, as I think the right hon. and learned Gentleman will agree.
There are quite a lot of curious features about this story, but I want to restrict what I have to say to what I think is the gravamen of the charge. It is that having approved the report of an independent inquiry, the right hon. and learned Gentleman received political representations to overturn it. Having listened to those representations ex parte, without asking anybody else to express a view, he reversed his decision and ordered a new inquiry and determined that meanwhile the borough should for all practical purposes be disfranchised. Those are grave charges. I want to state the background factually and as shortly as I can.
Towards the end of 1963, proposals were in train for an extension of the boundaries of the Borough of Northampton. It is common ground that this extension called for a redefinition of the ward boundaries within the new extended borough. Instructions to this end were issued on 25th March, 1964, in a letter from the Home Secretary. The instructions are worth pondering. They were:
The natural aims in drawing up the new ward boundaries would no doubt be—

(a) to provide an approximately equal number of local government electors for each councillor, allowance being made for any likely change in electorate because of development within the next five years; and
(b) to have regard—

(i) to the desirability of having easily identifiable boundaries; and
(ii) to any local ties which would be broken by the fixing of any particular boundary."

As I understand it, that letter is in common form and the House will realise that there is no reference to political considerations of any kind whatever. The

instructions were on the criteria laid down by the letter.
On 24th July, control of the Northampton Council passed to the Labour Party on a very narrow majority and on an election petition concerning a spoiled vote. On 24th September, the Home Office gave notice of a local inquiry, which was the normal and proper course to take, and appointed an experienced barrister—a man who, I understand, has conducted a number of these inquiries before—Mr. Verney, to look into these matters and to report.
On 12th October, the inquiry opened and there were two proposals before it. One was the town clerk's proposal, which was supported at the inquiry by the Labour Party. Indeed, the chairman of the Finance and General Purposes Committee gave evidence in support of it. The second was some counter-proposals, which were not original but which were second thoughts in the way of proposals, which Conservative councillors had put forward and which were supported by Mr. Walmsley, who is a solicitor of the Supreme Court.
Each side had had some weeks to consider these matters and had full knowledge of what the other side was to do. As is not unusual in these cases, each side considered that its proposals would provide five seats to each of the parties and leave two uncertain. Each side held the view that the scheme of the other would secure a majority of two for the opponents. These were not matters, and it is common ground that they were not matters, about which Mr. Verney was called upon to adjudicate, and, of course, no reference to them was contained in the criteria set before him.
Against that background, the town clerk opened his case with supporting evidence from Labour councillors and, in particular, from the chairman of the Finance and General Purposes Committee. He did it in these terms, that the basis which he had adopted was to follow the criteria laid down by the Secretary of State, namely, approximate equality of electorates, making allowance for development within the next five years, easily identifiable boundaries and local ties, saying that any suggestion that the proposals were designed to secure a permanent Labour majority was


unfounded and that any political result would be fortuitous.
Mr. Walmsley, with the counter-proposal, intervened to say that he would not make the inquiry political in any way. This approach was entirely consistent with the Home Secretary's instructions and it was stated in the presence of Labour councillors.
At that stage, the inquiry got down to a hard analysis of the criteria which the Home Secretary had set. If the House will bear with me, I want to refer to the merits which they discussed and considered and how they discussed and considered them before I deal with the political issue. I do not want to miss out anything. I will deal fully with the political point, but it is important to separate the merits of the case as set out by the Home Secretary and to raise the political points later.
Mr. Walmsley stated his objections to the town clerk's proposals in these words:
There remain three objections. First, unnecessary disturbance of existing ward boundaries and no sufficient account taken of historic associations or present ward loyalties. Secondly, artificial ward boundaries are created instead of such boundaries following clearly defined courses. Thirdly, insufficient numbers have been allocated to the inner land-locked wards which have no room for growth and are in many cases affected by proposals for slum clearance which will further reduce the numbers of the electors living in the ward, whereas in the outer ring of wards there is considerable growth potential.
A great deal of the inquiry was about this third point. If exact equality of numbers in all the wards now were sought, then, as the density decreased at the centre and building took place outside, in the view of the objectors the result would be inappropriate in five years' time. As the House will recall, the Home Secretary had specifically asked that this point should be properly and fully considered by Mr. Verney.
It therefore fell to Mr. Verney to investigate these matters and to report, and the Home Secretary will agree that he did a painstaking and thorough job. He went to view the sites; his listened to the evidence and it is clear from the report—I will quote any part of it if the Home Secretary so wishes—that he did not accept everything that either side said about matters of this character. Even-

tually, he came to the decision which the Home Secretary will find on page 24 of the typescript.
The first quotation I want to make goes to the specific point about the inner and outer wards. He said:
I accept the basic proposition that the inner ward should now be above the average and the outer wards below the average, if eventual parity is to be achieved.
Then he came to his conclusion and said:
Both the schemes which were put forward at the inquiry were honest attempts"—
I ask the House to mark those words—
to divide the County Borough into wards in strict accordance with the criteria laid down. The Council's scheme achieves more immediate parity of electorates, but the author of it conceded that, although he had looked to the future, he had not been in a position to ascertain all the current development plans, since he was acting privately in August, 1963. Accepting that due regard ought to be paid to foreseeable changes in the next five years, I am not convinced that the Council's scheme will show an equality of electorates at the end of that period.
In recommending for acceptance the scheme prepared by the Conservative Group for the purpose of the inquiry, I am impressed by the evidence secured as to future trends both of development and clearance, and by the probability that within the relevant period something approaching equality will be achieved. The boundaries selected are, in my opinion, preferable to those put forward by the Council, and there is no obvious interference with any existing community of interest.
I will refer to that again when I come to the political point.
Pausing there, on the merits of the case—that is, on the criteria posed to Mr. Verney by the Home Secretary—and confronted with these choices on the broad point that he had to decide, he came down, after careful consideration, firmly against the town clerk's proposals and in favour of the counter proposals.
That report containing that recommendation was forwarded to the Home Secretary. The Home Secretary, or the Home Office, considered it with the care normally given to matters of this character and his views were conveyed in a letter dated 23rd December, which reads as follows:
The Secretary of State has carefully considered Mr. Verney's report and the counterproposals made by the Conservative group of Northampton county borough councillors supported by the Northampton Conservative and Unionist Association. He notes that all


parties agreed, and Mr. Verney recommended, that there should be twelve wards for the enlarged county borough each returning three councillors. The Secretary of State accepts this proposal.
The Secretary of State has considered the main criticism made of the Council's proposals, that they failed sufficiently to take into account residential development in Northampton. He appreciates the contention that, since such development would take place for the most part in wards abutting the boundary whilst wards in the centre of Northampton would be affected by slum clearance, the electorates of the former wards would tend to increase and those of the latter to decrease with the result that there would be disparities between the electorates of the proposed wards in a few years' time. In the view of the Secretary of State the counter-proposals take account of this situation more satisfactorily than do the Council's proposals, by providing for wards in the centre with high electorates at present and wards abutting the boundary with low electorates. The Secretary of State accordingly accepts Mr. Verney's recommendation that the counter-proposals should be accepted subject to minor changes for the purpose of adopting boundaries which are more easily identifiable.
Having made that judgment, he is concerned about disfranchising anyone even for six weeks and makes a slight amendment about the arrangements for an election.
We have reached a situation in which two proposals have been canvassed. There has been a full independent inquiry. The inquiry has come down firmly on the side of the counter proposals. The report of the inquiry has been carefully considered by the Secretary of State, who supported what Mr. Verney had decided.
I would have thought that that would have been—and, indeed, I believe in my heart that the Secretary of State wishes that it would have been—the end of the matter. What happened next is, I must admit, in part a matter of conjecture. The Home Secretary's decision was greeted with considerable consternation by the narrow Labour majority in Northampton, which went straight into action in an attempt to get it reversed, using its narrow majority to pass a resolution which reads as follows:
That the proposed warding arrangements are wholly unacceptable to the Council.
This was a Labour Council with a majority of two.
That the views put forward by the Chairman he accepted and submitted to the Minister of Housing and Local Government"—

these were the views which had been rejected by Mr. Verney—
with a request that the warding arrangements proposed be abandoned"—
these were warding arrangements which had just been approved by the Secretary of State—
and that the draft Order be amended.
On 25th January, the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) and the chairman of the Finance and General Purposes Committee, whose evidence has been rejected—I do not mean that it was improper evidence, but, on the facts; it had been rejected by Mr. Verney—visited a Ministry in London, I understand. I think that the hon. and learned Member for Northampton saw the Home Secretary—or so we are informed. On 28th January the Labour majority approved the resolution which I have read which was really from the Finance and General Purposes Committee, and forwarded it to the Ministry of Housing, with a copy to the Home Office.
On 4th February, a most remarkable document was issued from the Home Office. I want to read it:
I am directed by the Secretary of State to refer to your letter of 29th January forwarding the resolution of the Northampton Borough Council asking him to rescind the decision regarding the warding arrangements for the extended county borough conveyed to you in the Home Office letter of 23rd December, and asking that the Order to be made by the Minister of Housing and Local Government under the Local Government Act 1958 should provide instead for the areas added to the borough to be temporarily annexed to contiguous wards and that the Order should include provision for the Council to submit a petition under … the Local Government Act 1933 by a specified date.
The Secretary of State has given the most careful consideration to the Council's resolution. He notes the view expressed in the resolution that Mr. Verney, the independent barrister who held the local inquiry, was misinformed on certain material aspects. While the Secretary of State does not accept that insufficient opportunity was given to all concerned to express their views fully at the public enquiry he has decided that in the present circumstances the best course will be for the whole question of the warding of Northampton to be considered afresh and publicly at a further local inquiry.
I am bound to say that I find that the most astonishing document. It followed with quite remarkable speed, particularly for the Home Office, on the receipt of the resolution, and it is


interesting in its content. It reverses a solemn decision which the Secretary of State himself had only recently made, and it refers to the fact that some suggestion has been made that Mr. Verney
was misinformed on certain material aspects.
It is difficult to see from the resolution what those aspects were. There were some rather loose words about Castle Ward, but at that time no opportunity had been given to anyone else to question these representations which had been made.
We are left with the impression that a great deal had been said to the Home Secretary apart from anything contained in the resolution. We are bound to ask for an account of what the hon. and learned Member for Northampton had said to the Home Secretary in pressing this matter. We are also bound to ask whether any Labour councillors had had interviews with him. I hope not. Whether they had or had not, this reversal was certainly an astonishing procedure.
I turn to the Home Secretary's explanation of why he did this. The Home Secretary's points do not at any stage go to the merits of the case. On the basic issue of Mr. Verney's decision, which was the balancing of the wards at the centre with the wards at the periphery, I understand that no word of criticism is made by the Home Secretary. That is to say, on all the criteria which were laid down by the Home Office as proper matters for Mr. Verney to consider, Mr. Verney's judgment in this matter is completely accepted and without question.
It is not suggested that Mr. Verney was misled or under any misapprehension on any point concerning the numbers, the boundaries, the building proposals, the local affinities or anything of that kind. The Home Secretary went out of his way, the last time we debated this matter, to make it absolutely clear that there could be no suggestion that insufficient opportunity was given to anybody to put any point of view that people wanted to put. Indeed, they were, I understand, specifically told by Mr. Verney on more than one occasion that if anybody in the room had any

kind of point additional to the ones he was considering, the fullest opportunity would be given to put it.
The Home Secretary's whole case rests upon the question whether the political effect of this decision was fully considered. I am most anxious to put this part of the Home Secretary's case fairly. I hope that I am not delaying the House, but this is an important matter and I want to be quite fair about it. I want to quote the point as it was put by the Home Secretary himself in the debate of 17th February. The right hon. and learned Gentleman took the resolution in two parts and based certain arguments, I understand, upon it. The first part was this, and I read now from the resolution that was sent to him:
The proposals which were drawn up by the Town Clerk and approved by the Council gave no political advantage to either party.
This is what the Labour Party itself was saying about the resolution.
The Labour Group of the Council accepted these as fair to both sides. The Conservative Party, whilst first objecting on political grounds, withdrew these objections at the inquiry. The probable political effect of the proposals drawn up by the Town Clerk was to divide the wards into five Labour and five Conservative, leaving Trinity and Kingsthorpe wards to swing according to the political pendulum. The effect of the Conservative counter proposals was to remove from both these wards a Labour area which would be added in each case to a ward which already had a substantial Labour majority, thereby making these two marginal wards into safe Conservative wards and giving a minority of Conservative voters a built-in majority of seven wards to five on the Council.
That is the quotation.
The Home Secretary stated:
I do not say that that is right; I deliberately avoid expressing an opinion about it, because I think that the inquiry which I anticipate will take place in due course should be conducted by a person with an open mind who should not be inhibited in any way by anything that I say in this debate."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th February, 1965; Vol. 706, c. 1302.]
But is this really an inquiry that the Home Secretary wants? Is it not the most extraordinary thing to import into an inquiry which has carefully gone into the merits of the case this bitterly contested issue of what the likely political results will be? If it was intended by the Home Office that this should be one of the criteria laid down, surely it should be stated frankly, fairly and fully to any


barrister appointed to make an inquiry of this kind so that it could be argued in front of him.
I hope that the Home Secretary, for whom the whole House has the deepest respect and regard for his fairmindedness—I am not making a personal attack upon him in any shape or form—will reflect upon this matter and consider the effect, not simply in Northampton—that may be important, and it is, for the Borough of Northampton—but the effect upon our whole procedure for examining Parliamentary boundaries if once we were to say that these bitterly controversial local judgments about the results which might flow are to be introduced into a matter of this kind.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: What about the Greater London boundaries?

Sir Douglas Glover: Cannot hon. Members opposite take it?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I am trying to put these points as fairly as I can. I am not making a personal attack on anybody.
It is common ground, in any event, that in so far as these dubious considerations were relevant at all, they could have been put—everybody at the inquiry had the fullest possible opportunity to put them—but for the Home Secretary, of all men, to order a new inquiry especially to allow those points to be put seems to me to be the most extraordinary view of the responsibilities which fall to him.
That brings me to the second and rather more subtle point that the Home Secretary put during the course of his argument to the House. He sought to suggest that a reason for having a new inquiry was because Mr. Verney was in some shape or form under a misconception. I want to deal with that point. Again, I should like to quote the part of the resolution on which the Home Secretary relies and his comments upon it. The resolution from the Labour majority said:
The Commissioner reporting to the Home Secretary emphasised that there was no political objection to the Conservative proposals. In this he was wholly mistaken. The Labour Group having accepted the Town Clerk's plan as fair and reasonable did not appear as objectors. As the Town Clerk was appearing for the Council and not representing the Labour Group, it was clearly impossible

for him to deal with the political consequences of these proposals, and as the Conservative Party withdrew all political objections to the Town Clerk's plan, there was no opportunity to challenge the Conservative proposals upon the basis of their political consequences.
The Home Secretary went on to say:
The case I make is this. I contrast, and I ask hon. Members to contrast, that passage, these assertions put forward by a small majority of the council after a debate, with the assumption that underlay Mr. Verney's report. He was clearly making his report on the assumption that there were no political aspects to the proposals, which he was considering and, as I read it, here is the council resolving by a small majority that the effect of the proposals was to remove from two wards a Labour area which would be added in each case to a ward which already had a substantial Labour majority."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th February, 1965, Vol. 706, c. 1302.]
If the Home Secretary is to reverse a decision of this character, not only a decision of an independent inquiry, but a decision which he had reached only a few weeks earlier upon the political issue, on the ground that there had been misconception, I think that he will agree with me that his case has to be put with the most meticulous precision. In basing himself on this resolution, he is on remarkably insecure ground, for he has already abandoned the second part of what I have read.
It is no longer contested but that everybody had the fullest opportunity to put his points at the inquiry. This is now common ground between the Home Secretary and ourselves.

Mr. R. T. Paget: It most certainly is not. We did not have any opportunity to put our case against these proposals.

Mr. Thorneycroft: I ask the Home Secretary specifically to say in his reply whether he asserts that no opportunity was given to every person to put his case. The case that we are putting from this side of the House is that on more than one occasion the learned inspector invited anyone in the room to put any point that he wished to do so. I do not think that on the last occasion the right hon. and learned Gentleman in any way sought to contest this. Indeed, the letter of 4th February said:
While the Secretary of State does not accept that insufficient opportunity was given to all concerned to express their views at the public inquiry …


I would have thought that it no longer lay open to the Home Secretary to raise that point at the present time.

Mr. Paget: rose—

Mr. Thorneycroft: I am not dealing with the hon. and learned Gentleman, but with a more important issue. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman wishes to take back what was said in the letter of 4th February, he is free to do so.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sir Frank Soskice): indicated dissent.

Mr. Thorneycroft: The right hon. and learned Gentleman shakes his head. I do not think that he would want to take back what was said.
The Home Secretary is basing himself on most insecure grounds. The first part he has already abandoned. He has abandoned the question of saying that insufficient opportunity was given to people to put their views.
The second question concerns the nature of what Mr. Verney said about the political side. He did not say what the resolution said. No one at any inquiry, or out of it, would pretend that political results would not flow from decisions of this character, however difficult and controversial they may be to assess. Any redefining of boundaries is bound to have a political effect. What was said was something quite different. What was said was that the proposals which were made went to the merits of the case as laid down in the criteria specified by the Home Secretary.
What was said in the report was that they were not an attempt to gerrymander on either side, and it is worth quoting Mr. Verney's comments because this is the point on which the Home Secretary stood. He said:
Any suggestion that the proposals"—
that is, the town clerk's proposals—
were designed to secure a permanent Labour majority was unfounded and any political results would be fortuitous. Mr. Walmsley intervened to say that he was not going to make the inquiry in any way a political one.
Then, when Mr. Verney was appraising the case, he said:
It is right to emphasise that the Town Clerk's proposals, which now form the basis of the Council's scheme, were drawn up by him alone with no political outcome in mind. The

criticism from a political point of view was not pursued at the inquiry and should be disregarded in assessing the merits of the scheme. It is equally important to emphasise that no suggestion was made that the new Conservative proposals should be criticised as designed to secure political advantage, whatever may have been the defects of earlier proposals. The two schemes have to be judged solely according to whether or not they succeed in satisfying the criteria which have to be applied; the authors of each scheme have had these criteria clearly in mind.
I would have thought that that was a proper view to take of the manner in which both these matters had been presented, and Mr. Verney himself had considered and related them to the precise criteria which the Home Secretary had set.
We then come to his conclusions. He said:
Both the schemes which were put forward at the inquiry were honest attempts to divide the County Borough into wards in strict accordance with the criteria laid down.
I cannot conceive that the Home Secretary wishes to go behind that at the present time. He went on to say:
In recommending for acceptance the scheme prepared by the Conservative Group for the purpose of the inquiry, I am impressed by the evidence secured as to future trends both of development and clearance, and by the probability that within the relevant period something approaching equality will be achieved. The boundaries selected are, in my opinion, preferable to those put forward by the Council, and there is no obvious interference with any existing community interests.
That is on the merits.
He then said:
I am reinforced in my view by the fact that no suggestion of political motive has been advanced. When the balance of power between two parties is so close, it must be expected that legitimate criticism on this basis would be put forward, if it reasonably could be. There being no such criticism of the Conservative scheme, and the political criticism of the Council's scheme not having been pursued, I have been free to determine my recommendation on the merits of each scheme as presented to me.
Mr. Verney accepted that even if the town clerk's scheme favoured the Labour Party, as the Conservatives believed it did, it was fortuitous. I, too, accept that. Indeed, the Home Secretary accepts it, and I am sure that the whole House accepts it. He accepted that the counter-scheme was not designed to secure political advantage; that the motive was to fulfil the criteria laid down by the Home Secretary.
If the Home Secretary's case is to be based on the argument of misconception, it must be directed at the precise terms of the report. It must go not to the resolution, but to the motives, the interests, and the purposes with which these two schemes were argued. If it is his case that these assumptions about the town clerk, a solicitor of the Supreme Court, might be false—although they were never challenged, though full opportunity was given throughout the hearing to challenge them—and that the opportunity should now be provided at a new inquiry for either side to accuse the other of jerrymandering, it is a most incredible proposition for a Home Secretary to put forward.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman has reversed a very careful decision of his own on an independent inquiry. He has done it under admitted political pressure. He has disfranchised not only a number of new electors, but all the existing electors of all parties, whether Conservative, Liberal or Socialist, for a matter of months, when, only a week earlier, he had been expressing concern in case new ones were disfranchised for six weeks. He claimed on 17th February, rather surprisingly, that he thought that this was pouring oil on troubled waters. I would have thought that it was pouring petrol or the flames of local disagreement.
But the issues are graver and much more far-reaching than their application to Northampton alone. I believe that the Home Secretary's judgment here goes to the roots of Home Office administration at a point where the administration of the Home Office must not only be, but be seen to be, above reproach. The right hon. and learned Gentleman's honour and integrity are in no way at stake, but the reputation of a great Office of State for wise and dispassionate administration hangs in the balance upon the speech which I call upon the right hon. and learned Gentleman to make.

4.50 p.m.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sir Frank Soskice): First, some questions of fact have been asked, to which I wish to reply. As I stated when we previously debated this issue, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) came to see me.

I did not see anybody else from Northampton from beginning to end. I have not been under the slightest political pressure of any sort, from any person—from my colleagues or otherwise—and I assert positively and categorically that this decision, whether a good decision or a bad decision, was taken in the exercise of my own completely free and untrammelled judgment.
It is for the House, to whom alone I am responsible, to form a view as to whether or not it was the right decision in the circumstances, but I repudiate at the outset any suggestion that it was arrived at as a result of pressure put upon me. It was not. There was no such pressure and, as I have said, I freely, voluntarily and deliberately reached the conclusion which is now the subject of discussion before the House.
The question is: was it a right decision or a wrong decision, in the exceptional circumstances of a very unusual case? Having carefully considered it, I think that it was the right decision to come to. It was a decision which inevitably brought the risk of the sort of misconception which has been imported into this debate. There was an obvious risk of that. I do not use against the right hon. Member the word "imported" in any derogatory sense, but it has been imported into the debate, and that is what the debate is about. It would be much easier, in a case like that, to do nothing, but in my opinion it would be very cowardly to refuse to do what I thought was the right thing in the circumstances in case my action might be misunderstood.
Was it or was it not the right thing to do in the circumstances? As I have said, this is the second time that we have discussed this matter. I think it right that the House should be reminded—although the right hon. Gentleman gave a general indication of the position—of the background of the incident that we are discussing. The May, 1964, elections in Northampton had produced an exactly equal number of Labour and Conservative seats. The mayor had a casting vote. An election petition was brought which centred on the question whether one vote cast in one ward was a spoiled vote. In July, 1964, the decision was pronounced on the election petition, which shifted the balance of power from the Conservatives


to the Labour Party, because it gave to the Labour Party what had been previously a Conservative seat. From July, 1964, therefore, there was a Labour majority of 25 against a Conservative minority of 23. I simply remind the House of those facts so that it should have in mind, how extremely evenly balanced the parties were in Northampton.
Why did I decide that in the circumstances the best thing would be for there to be a new inquiry? As the right hon. Gentleman has said, I had received what I thought was a careful and well-reasoned report from Mr. Verney. I was quite content with it, and I accepted it. It went into the merits and discussed them carefully. That report, in three places, contains passages showing that Mr. Verney placed great emphasis upon the fact that there were no political considerations to be taken into account in this case. The right hon. Gentleman has read those passages and has put one interpretation upon them. Frankly, I put a different one on them. I would like again to go through those passages in order to remind the House of what seems to me to be the right inference from the language which Mr. Verney used.
There are three passages altogether to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, and I read first the second of the three. I would be grateful if the House would pay close attention to the way in which Mr. Verney phrases his language. He says:
It is right to emphasise"—
note the use of the word "emphasise"—
that the Town Clerk's proposals, which now form the basis of the Council's scheme, were drawn up by him alone with no political outcome in mind.
As far as I know nobody now disputes that the town clerk's proposals conform exactly to that description. It is true that the Conservative counterproposers first lodged a political objection against the town clerk's proposals. They lodged that political objection saying that it had a political result to which they took exception. When the hearing took place before Mr. Verney they withdrew that objection, I take it because they felt that they could no longer sustain it.

Sir Spencer Summers: Surely the reason for that attitude was

that they realised that it was out of keeping with the criteria which the Home Office used in such circumstances.

Sir F. Soskice: If that is so, I ask why did they first put forward the objection?

Sir John Hobson: I can assure the right hon. and learned Gentleman that Mr. Walmsley, of whom I have spoken, took the view, when he appeared before the inquiry, that political considerations should not be discussed on either side. It was for this sole reason that he felt he should not pursue the objection.

Sir F. Soskice: If the right hon. and learned Gentleman says that, I accept it as a matter of fact. All I would point out is that at first the Conservative Party itself raised a political objection, so it hardly lies in its mouth to say that political objections were wholly irrelevant.
I will continue to read the passage, on which a lot depends. Mr. Verney says:
It is equally important to emphasise"—
I ask the House to note the phrase; he has already previously used the word "emphasise"—
that no suggestion was made that the new Conservative proposals should be criticised as designed to secure political advantage, whatever may have been the defects of earlier proposals. The two schemes have to be judged solely according to whether or not they succeeded in satisfying the criteria which have to be applied; the authors of each scheme have had these criteria clearly in mind.
That is the first passage, in which it certainly seemed to me that the Commissioner—Mr. Verney—in a careful report, was saying, "I attach considerable importance to the fact that there is no significant political outcome or result." It seems to me that that is the only way in which that passage can be read.
If there is any doubt whatsoever about it, I come to the second passage which the right hon. Gentleman also read out, and which actually appears in his conclusions. He states his conclusions, part of which the right hon. Gentleman read out. Again, I ask the House to note carefully the words that he used. Having stated in the previous paragraph that he preferred the counter-proposals to the proposals, the counter-proposals to


the town clerk's proposals, he goes on to use this language:
I am reinforced in my view by the fact that no suggestion of political motive has been advanced. When the balance of power between two parties is so close, it must be expected that legitimate criticism on this basis would be put forward, if it reasonably could be. There being no such criticism of the Conservative scheme, and the political criticism of the Council's scheme not having been pursued I have been free to determine my recommendation on the merits of each scheme as presented to me.
I read that passage in this way. Hon. and right hon. Members may interpret as they think proper. The right hon. Gentleman has put forward one view of what it means. It seems to me, with respect to the right hon. Gentleman, beyond the slightest doubt that what Mr. Verney is there saying is, "This is a case in which it was not necessary for me to look at any political motives."The proposals put forward did not produce any advantage to either party, any marked advantage, at any rate. Every proposal, of course, advantages one party or the other to some extent. But what he is saying here is that this is a case where political questions just do not enter into it and the clear implication to my mind of that remark is, "Had it been present to my mind that there was a marked political result from the proposals or counter proposals, I certainly would have wanted to look at them and scrutinise them to make perfectly certain that they were purely coincidental."
I am not making any attempt to impugn anyone from beginning to end. I do not do so. All I am saying here is that Mr. Verney was, at any rate to my mind, as clearly as he possibly could saying, "Of course, if I had known that there were political results emerging from either of these proposals, the proposals or the counter proposals, I should have wanted to look at them." If one makes the conjecture that he would have wanted to look at them, there could be no question of motivation and the matter was one he could take on the assumption that neither party was trying to secure a political advantage against the other.

Mr. Thorneycroft: I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way. He keeps quoting Mr. Verney and saying "if he knew there

were political results". The point I put to him quite specifically—and I should be grateful if he would deal with it—was this. I said that Mr. Verney did not refer to the results. He really had in mind—whether the results might be fortuitous or not—whether the scheme was designed for a particular purpose. He referred to the question whether motives were directed to other causes than the criteria laid down. Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman really say that he was under a misconception in those matters and that he wanted to have a new inquiry to go into the whole question of motive and design?

Sir F. Soskice: I would have thought that quite clearly there was misconception there. As I understand, the right hon. Gentleman seeks to draw a distinction between motive and result which seems to me with respect to the right hon. Gentleman to be a very metaphysical distinction.
If one party produces a scheme which is designed by him to secure a political advantage over the other party—I am not asserting this, and I emphasise that—if he does, the likelihood is that there may be a political result which might operate in his favour. I think that it is quite unreal and, if I may say so, hair-splitting to try to draw a distinction between those two words. What Mr. Verney seemed to me to be saying was, "I can put out of my mind any question of political motivation or result in this case. All I have to look at is the evidence on the merits." That is as I read it. The next—

Mr. F. V. Colfield: Surely the only issue that the commissioner could have had before him was the merits of the case in the light of the criteria. Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman really saying that had he known there were political considerations he must look at some other criteria?

Sir F. Soskice: I can perfectly understand that some commissioners—and I believe they do—may say, "I will not even hear evidence or arguments about political results", and that other commissioners may take a different view, and say, "If it appears that the result of one scheme greatly advantages one political party, that is a thing I should


took into to consider whether I am forming a wrong conclusion in ignoring something not brought to my mind because those who have political motives in this have not brought it to my mind."
I am not saying that was done here. I am saying it is a matter of relevance, that is to say, that it is a matter which many commissioners may think is relevant. They would want to know whether a matter before them was something which tended to political motive in which they should make an inquiry. Mr. Verney was saying, "At least so far as any political motive is concerned I can put it out of my mind altogether. That is not present in this case." He having said that—

Mr. Emlyn Hooson: I am grateful to the Home Secretary for giving way. I want to ask him about a matter of some importance in this case, which is troubling me. Has the Home Secretary come to the conclusion that Mr. Verney, in arriving at his decision, was recognising or taking into account anything which he ought not to have taken into account in arriving at his decision?

Sir F. Soskice: Precisely the contrary—that he failed to take into account, because he did not know of it, something he would have thought relevant had he known of it.
We next come to the resolution passed by the council on 28th January, that is, the next stage in the history of these proceedings. What does that resolution say? It has been read out, but I attach great importance to what is stated:
The proposals which were drawn up by the Town Clerk and approved by the Council gave no political advantage to either party. The Labour Group of the Council accepted these as fair to both sides. The Conservative Party, whilst first objecting on political grounds, withdrew these objections at the inquiry.
Then it goes on to contrast the two schemes:
The probable political effect of the proposals drawn up by the Town Clerk was to divide the wards into five Labour and five Conservative leaving the Trinity and Kingsthorpe to swing according to the political pendulum.
I should be grateful if the House would note what is said in the next paragraph:
The effect of the Conservative counter proposals was to remove from both these wards a Labour area"—

that is to say, both the swinging wards—
which would be added in each case to a ward which already had a substantial Labour majority, thereby making these two marginal wards into safe Conservative wards and giving a minority of Conservative voters a built-in majority of seven wards to five on the Council.
I beg hon. Members again to contrast what is said there with what Mr. Verney had said in the second passage which I read. Rightly or wrongly, I do not seek to prejudge it, because I want someone to come to this with no preconceptions because of anything said in this debate, and, I repeat, in order that one can put an end once and for all to this controversy in Northampton. Contrast what is said in that resolution—that, there being five Conservative wards, five Labour wards, and two swinging wards which might go either way according to the shift of public opinion, the result of the Conservative proposals would be to turn both swinging wards into safe Conservative seats—with what is said in the second passage:
When the balance of power between two parties is so close, it must be expected that legitimate criticism on this basis would be put forward, if it reasonably could be. There being no such criticism of the Conservative scheme, and the political criticism of the Council's scheme not having been pursued. I have been free to determine my recommendation on the merits of each scheme as presented to me.
Before Mr. Verney was: the town clerk's proposal, which—so far as I know, it is not suggested otherwise—produced a rough balance; and the counter-proposal which, it is positively asserted in the resolution, so far from producing a rough balance, went completely away from that and took the two swinging wards and converted them into safe Conservative seats. That latter point was not present in his mind. Not only was it not present in his mind, but he thought that the opposite was the case. Therefore, he thought that he had to consider two sets of proposals and counter-proposals, both of which produced no significant political advantage to either party.
The question which emerged from the documents was what was the right thing to do. What should I do in seeking to approach a situation of this kind? I accept—and I do not seek to retire from the position—that undoubtedly the position could have been pointed out to him.


The Conservative counter-proposals had been urged in September. They could have been pointed out to him, but they were not.

Mr. Anthony Marlowe: Would the right hon. Gentleman deal with the specific matter dealt with in The Times leader recently, whether it is the duty of a commissioner to take political considerations into account at all?

Sir F. Soskice: Certainly I will deal with that, if I may deal with one thing at a time. I shall continue with the point which I am developing and then come to the point made by the hon. and learned Gentleman.
The point which I was dealing with was that there was an opportunity to raise this. Suppose that this had just been a dispute between two private people, and that one of them had failed to put forward a part of his case. On ordinary principles, one would have said, "So be it. The loss must rest with you. You should have put your case forward." This was not the case at all. This was a public matter, with the votes of many thousands of voters in Northampton affected. It seems to me that that sort of consideration should not apply in such a public situation. Therefore, it should not be a bar to my taking into account, if I thought proper, that the Labour councillors who were present before Mr. Verney could—although in fact they did not—have put forward this consideration, which seems to me, at any rate, a consideration which he would have wished to take into account.
May I go on to deal with the question of the hon. and learned Member for Hove (Mr. Marlowe)—[Interruption.] I wonder whether the hon. and learned Member would mind not muttering and allow me to answer his question. I quite accept that the objective of an inquiry either under Section 25 or under the procedure which operated in this case is an inquiry designed to secure wards of equal numbers, and so on, possessing certain characteristics independent of political result. I repeat this and assert it and I think that in future it is a consideration which one has to observe with the greatest care. It is right that it always should be observed. When a situation arises in which one set of proposals produces

a most marked and, in this case, crucial and critical political result, I should not think it irrelevant if a commissioner thought, "At least, I want to look into it to see whether my judgment may be, in any event, honest on the merits of the case, by reference to the fact that one of the schemes produces this marked result." The marked result may or may not be fortuitous. It may be motivated. I do not know one way or the other, and I am not making any imputation against anyone.
I say emphatically that Mr. Verney came to his conclusion upon a misconception. He thought that there was no such consideration present in this case. It is clear from what he said that he would have wanted to consider it. Therefore, it seemed to me that it would have been quite wrong to leave the matter as it was and the question therefore was: what would be the proper thing to do. It seemed to me that if the matter were left as it was, there would have been a legacy of ill-will and suspicion, which would continue for a long time.
The only way in which one could avoid a situation of that sort would be to say, "Let us start again and have a completely full inquiry at which everybody, no matter who they are, can put forward any point of view to the Commissioner." No one would then have the slightest ground for complaint. It seems to me that if this new inquiry takes place, my great hope is that it will, once and for all, put an end to the disagreeable situation which has now arisen. [Laughter.] Hon. Gentlemen opposite may scoff. It is a matter for them.
It seemed to me, when I considered these documents, that this was the right course to take. Having heard the criticisms of it and the arguments against it, I still think that it was the right course to take in the special circumstances of this very exceptional situation. Very rarely does this kind of situation arise, but, as it has arisen and circumstances have worked together to produce the result which the House is investigating, I thought, and I still think, that much the best thing would be to have a further inquiry so that everyone can be fully heard and the matter, as I hope, finally disposed of.
These are the considerations which I put before the House. As I say, I utterly


deny that this was the result of any pressure brought to bear on me. It was a judgment, right or wrong. It is for the House, to which I am solely responsible, to judge whether it was right or wrong. It may have been said that it was a difficult matter of judgment, but, such as it was, that was my judgment. Having heard all the criticisms, I still think that that, in the circumstances, was the best thing on balance for me to do.

Mr. J. Grimond: In the new letter to the new commissioner whom the right hon. and learned Gentleman intends to appoint, will that commissioner be directed to take account of a further criterion, that is, the political effects?

Sir F. Soskice: He certainly will not. He will be asked to produce what I may loosely call the best warding system. If he wishes to examine, because they are brought to his notice, the political consequences of any proposals put before him, it will be for him to decide what attention he will give to it. I certainly do not intend to direct either him or any future commissioner to take into account the political results. Their only relevance is in deciding whether he may be quite certain that he has a full, complete, and accurate review of the merits of the case.

5.19 p.m.

Mr. Henry Brooke: In a case such as this, I cannot conceive that I or any other Conservative Home Secretary, having reached a considered decision, would have yielded to representations from one political party only and altered it.
I had about 40 of these re-warding cases to deal with while I was Home Secretary. There were more than usual, because all the new London boroughs came up. I reached a decision on every one of them, and the provincial boroughs, myself. There was some suggestion, some hint, in our debate last week that the original decision in the Northampton case was given in the Home Secretary's name but not by him personally. I cannot think that that is true. If it is true, I would strongly advise him to handle these important quasi-judicial matters himself, in person. That was certainly my practice.

Sir F. Soskice: In defence of those who

advised me, I would point out that it was entirely my decision, absolutely my decision. I do not know who signed the letter. It was signed after I saw it, and I take the fullest and most complete responsibility for it.

Mr. Brooke: The practice which I established was that each of these commissioner's reports came up to one of my Joint Parliamentary Under-Secretaries. He went through it carefully, and he minuted it, and in sending it forward to me he drew my attention to, for instance, whether it was a simple and straightforward case or whether it was a difficult and complex case.
The House will realise that many of these are quite simple. Perhaps the inquiry has revealed virtually no objection—possibly a dispute on some minor boundary, perhaps a dispute about the name of a new ward, and that is all. In every one which was a difficult case, I studied the commissioner's report most carefully and I went personally through the commissioner's reasoning to see whether it appeared to me that he had reached his conclusions in a reasonable and logical way.
In every case that I handled, without exception, including all the London boroughs, I thought it right to confirm the commissioner's recommendations. I cannot conceive of any circumstances in which I would have decided otherwise, unless it had been clear to me that the commissioner had failed to apply the criteria which he was required to apply—and those criteria have been mentioned. They are, first, equality of representation throughout the borough; secondly, identifiable boundaries; and thirdly, local ties.
In this Northampton case I understand that the Home Secretary agrees with the commissioner that the alternative plan, the Conservative plan, satisfies these three requirements better than does the town clerk's plan. I understand that he in no way goes back on that.
He wrote to the council on 23rd December confirming the commissioner's recommendations and saying, in the course of his letter, that it would be unsatisfactory if the new areas being included in the borough, where there are about 10,000 people, were not to be represented on the council until some time after 1st April. He therefore suggested


that there should be new elections well before 1st April, so that all these 10,000 people would have the chance to vote for those who were to represent them when the borough with its new boundaries came into existence on 1st April.
He wrote that letter on 23rd December. I suppose that it is quite likely that due to Christmas posts it did not arrive until after Christmas. But according to the minutes of the Northampton Council, the Finance and General Purposes Committee of that Council met on 28th December and had the Home Secretary's letter before it, and it resolved that the Home Secretary's decision be noted—nothing more than that. That report was sent forward by the committee to the full council, which met on 4th January. The report was received by the full council on 4th January without debate. If it had been felt that there were strong and tenable grounds for objecting to the Home Secretary's conclusions, that would have been the time to take the objection. Not one word was said.
It was after 4th January, after that council meeting, that things began to happen. A group of Labour councillors requisitioned a special meeting of the council, as they were entitled to do, to discuss this matter, which could have been discussed at the regular meeting on 4th January when it came up on the agenda then. The Home Secretary last week described as an accident the fact that the political considerations were not raised at the inquiry before Mr. Verney in October. I do not know whether it was another accident that the Home Secretary's letter was not discussed when it was on the agenda of the full council on 4th January. I understand that by an accident two of the Labour councillors were away that day, and therefore the Labour Party had not a majority. Whether for that reason or for some other, the discussion of this matter—this inherently controversial matter—was postponed until a special meeting of the council held on 28th January.
Meanwhile, so we have been informed here, the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) had a talk with the Home Secretary.

Mr. Paget: Would the right hon. Gentleman like to know why that meeting was postponed? It was because of the law which provides how a meeting

is to be requisitioned. Although the mayor normally calls it on the first possible date, this mayor, who is a Conservative, called it on the last possible date.

Mr. Brooke: Perhaps I am as well informed about these matters as is the hon. and learned Gentleman. It seems to me that the mayor was acting quite reasonably in not bringing forward this special and obviously highly controversial meeting to take place immediately before a wholly noncontroversial special meeting of the council already fixed to take place on 26th January to confer the freedom of Northampton on two citizens.
On 28th January the council met and, by 25 votes to 23, on a strict party vote, passed the resolution which has loomed so large in these proceedings, based on a report that the plan recommended by the commissioner and approved by the Home Secretary would result in making
two marginal wards"—
these are the words which have been repeatedly quoted—
into safe Conservative wards and giving a minority of Conservative voters a built-in majority of seven wards to five on the council
The Home Secretary, when he received the letter containing this resolution, was faced with representations from the Member of Parliament for the borough—the Labour Member of Parliament for the borough—and a resolution passed by the narrow Labour majority on the council, with the minority on the council strongly rebutting the majority view. It must have been quite clear to the Home Secretary by that time that this was a subject of acute party controversy within Northampton. As far as I am aware, no pressure for changing the decision came from anybody at all except members of the Labour Party locally.
I must say that if I had had to deal with this situation, with the parties reversed, when I was Home Secretary, I should have told all concerned quite plainly that I had reached a decision and that my decision was final. I would have explained to anybody who came to see me or communicated with me that where a Minister is acting in a quasi-judicial capacity he must not vacillate and, above all, he must not act in such a way as


to give rise to any taint of suspicion that there is political gerrymandering. I regard that as an absolute rule. [Laughter.] I am astonished that hon. Members opposite laugh at it. They must have a wholly wrong and warped idea of what the quasi-judicial functions of a Minister are.
I would have reminded anybody who came to see me or communicated with me that warding arrangements in a borough are not necessarily permanent and that a fresh review of them can be undertaken at any time. If the objectors replied that a fresh review, under the law as it stands, can be called for only by whichever is the majority party on the council, I would have expressed willingness to go into the question of amending the law in this respect for provincial boroughs and bringing it into line with the better law in the London boroughs, which is now laid down in the London Government Act, 1963. In London the law empowers anybody, not only the majority party on a council, to call for a review. I am certain that it is only on that basis that one can get absolute fairness and remove continuing suspicion and recrimination.

Mr. Eric Lubbock: Would it not be very much more satisfactory to deal with this problem in the long term by having proportional representation? Then it would be entirely immaterial where the ward boundaries were drawn.

Mr. Brooke: The hon. Gentleman will no doubt be able to argue that case if he catches your eye, Mr. Speaker; if he can convince you that the subject of proportional representation is in order on this Motion of censure.
I cannot help wondering why the Home Secretary did not take the course I have mentioned. I cannot help wondering why he did not stand firm and tell those people who were seeking to get at him to go to blazes. He would have put himself completely above criticism, certainly above any criticism that could be justified. What he did was to yield, and to eat his words about the importance of the 10,000 new electors having their own representation on the council from 1st April.
While I listened to his speech today I could see that he was seeking to be as

persuasive and reasonable as possible but, so far as I could make out, he completely missed that count in the indictment against him. These 10,000 people, through his change of mind, now have no chance of voting until something like October. Meanwhile, the small majority of two for the Labour Party on the council will continue, through his action, for a further period of months.
The Home Secretary said last week that there was considerable feeling in Northampton. Can he produce any evidence of any feeling in Northampton, outside the Northampton Labour Party? I have certainly not come across any. I have not been made aware of any. Nobody else complained against the Home Secretary's original decision. But there must be a lot of those 10,000 people complaining now—now that they have discovered that they are to be disfranchised for six months. And maybe a lot of non-party people are complaining because they dislike this way of going about things.
The Home Secretary tries to justify his decision by arguing that the Commissioner was not properly informed on a subject on which the Labour Group on the council had had ample opportunity of informing him at the public inquiry in October. They did not mention then their views about the party implications of the alternative plan, nor at the council meetings which took place in November and December, nor at the council meeting of 4th January. It was only when the decision of the Commissioner and the Home Secretary had gone against them that they decided to bring up this argument that the alternative plan would bring about a built-in Conservative majority.
The House must realise the situation, that there is a claim and a counter-claim. Whereas the Labour Party in Northampton makes the claim which I have mentioned, the Conservative Party makes the counter-claim that the town clerk's plan—the plan which the Home Secretary originally rejected—would bring about a permanent Labour majority on the council. I do not know whether this is one of the matters which the new Commissioner is expected to sort out, but it must be an extremely difficult matter for him to address himself to.
The Home Secretary's argument does not convince me—his argument that the


Commissioner was not fully informed on a matter which he thinks was relevant to the inquiry, though the Commissioner's instructions did not ask him to take it into account—and I do not think it will convince anybody else in the world, except those who want Labour to be in power at any cost.

Sir Godfrey Nicholson: When there is a political implication, are there any written or unwritten criteria which the commissioner is instructed to have in mind?

Mr. Brooke: None that I am aware of. The three criteria have been mentioned. They were mentioned by me and previously were quoted in full by my right hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. Thorneycroft), who read to the House that passage in the Home Office letter.

Mr. A. J. Irvine: Would the right hon. Gentleman say whether or not he agrees that if the proposals had the result of giving a notable political advantage to one side or the other that is a ground for giving them particular scrutiny?

Mr. Brooke: I think that if commissioners are to take specifically into account the sort of matter which the hon. and learned Gentleman mentioned, it would be far better that they should be told that from the outset. That is not the case. If it is to happen in future it will mean a change in Home Office policy. I interrupted in the discussion last week and asked the Home Secretary a question, as a result of which he assured me that there was no change in Home Office policy. I said that I did not think that the Home Secretary's explanation last week and today would convince anybody, except those who want Labour to be in local government power in Northampton at any cost. The cost is high. The right hon. and learned Gentleman has thrown over his own argument about not disfranchising the 10,000 people. He has taken a step which is bound to be keenly resented by people, including non-party people in Northampton, who feel that all this savours of manipulating ward boundaries for political ends. He has also forgotten some words which he might well recall. Indeed, he may have been in the

audience which listened to them only 10 months ago. The words were:
When the gods seek to destroy Governments they first tempt them into illiberality. For the misuse of power arising from the arrogance of office first manifests itself in straining, debasing, constitutional processes, not least in those cases where Ministers are entrusted with quasi-judicial functions.
Those words were spoken by the present Prime Minister to the Society of Labour Lawyers 10 months ago.
This is not the way, as the Home Secretary suggested in his speech last week, to restore confidence. It is not the way to get rid of ill-feeling. It is the way to shatter confidence and perpetuate ill-feeling. I do not believe that ordinary people in Northampton are saying today, "What a wise Home Secretary we have. We are pleased to pay extra rates for the expenses arising out of a second public inquiry. This is the way we will get a solution on which everybody will happily agree". It is far more likely that they are saying, "Whatever happens now will be bad". If in the end it comes out in favour of the Labour Party, people will suspect that the whole affair has been rigged. If it comes out in favour of the Conservative Party, they will ask, "Why all this extra trouble and expense?"
What is the new Commissioner to do? This is the question which the Home Secretary has still not answered. Apparently, the commissioner is simply to take into account considerations of party political advantage which were not brought out at the last inquiry. He is to take into account the claim and the counter-claim. As I understand it, the Home Secretary finds no other fault with the commissioner's report, which he at first accepted and has now rejected.
If it is the Home Secretary's wish that these political claims and counterclaims shall be examined at a public inquiry, I must tell him that there is no provision in the law saying that such matters are to be taken into account. There is no provision in the existing instructions to commissioners that they should do this. It will be imported at the personal request of the Home Secretary. Hitherto, these warding and re-warding questions, political dynamite as they often are, as I well know, have been settled impartially


for many years—impartially, regardless of the colour of the Government in power. This is what the Home Secretary has changed, I fear. His decision will at any rate appear to give notice to future commissioners holding inquiries that, if their recommendations anger the local Labour Party, a new inquiry may be ordered. It would be far better, if the Home Secretary wishes these matters to be examined further on political lines, that he should say that in the official Home Office letter.
I understand his dilemma. Of course I have a great deal of sympathy with him. I know what it is to be up against the ruthless pursuit of power by the Labour Party in local government. I must say that a firmer Home Secretary would have decided differently from the way the right hon. and learned Gentleman did on this occasion. He said last week that Mr. Verney's inquiry had miscarried. No, there was only one miscarriage. That was the miscarriage of justice.
Some reports by commissioners which came to me while I was Home Secretary were obviously going to be popular with one party locally. Some were going to be popular with the other party. In approving some of the London reports which came before me, I realised that I would make myself hated by the local Conservatives in a particular borough, and I did. They never attempted to make me change my decision. If they had made representations to me, I would have stood up to them. I would have made them see that I was acting in a quasi-judicial capacity, and that a judge does not alter his decision or start to vacillate because one of the parties does not like that decision. In a case like this, where the Home Secretary was performing a quasi-judicial function, if I had been exposed to the kind of political representations to which he was subjected, I would have resigned rather than yielded to them. He yielded.

5.43 p.m.

Mr. R. T. Paget: When the right hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Brooke) spoke of the madness of illiberality and made a quotation on that subject, I was a little reminded of Disraeli's reply to Peel when he made his famous quotation from Canning. Disraeli looked at him, and said, "I amaze at the time, the quotation and the man."
This is a peculiar debate. What the debate is really about is an ingenious piece of gerrymandering which the Tory Party very nearly got away with, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary is being censured for not having quite fallen into the trap. That is really what the debate is about. Let us get to the facts, because the House has yet to hear the facts of this case. When the boundaries of Northampton were extended, the Conservatives were in control. The wards had not been changed for 30 years, and a change of ward boundaries was clearly necessary. The two parties each agreed to appoint a committee and negotiate the wards on a fair basis. They were unsuccessful in doing so, so they agreed between themselves to ask the town clerk to make an impartial plan. The town clerk made that plan. He made it impartially. This is the first impartial plan.

Sir J. Hobson: The hon. and learned Gentleman should get the facts right. As I understand it—he knows a great deal about this—the position is that after the parties had discovered that they could not agree they discovered that a year previously, unrequested, the town clerk had himself produced a plan. They therefore asked to look at the town clerk's plan, and he produced it.

Mr. Paget: I am afraid that is not accurate. They asked the town clerk to prepare a plan. He said, "I have already done so because I anticipated that this might happen". That was the impartial plan which they asked him to produce.
That plan was accepted by the Labour Party, then a minority, but was refused by the Conservative Party. It was refused on absolutely frankly political grounds. No argument other than political grounds was advanced. The basis of the Conservative plan which was produced was that the wards were arranged on what the Conservatives described as rateable value, whereby votes would carry weight according to the rates paid.
Then the Conservatives lost control of the council. We considered—that is, the Labour Party considered—reverting to the plan which it had produced, but it decided not to do so. It decided to keep the same attitude in power as it had held


in opposition and support the impartial plan which had been prepared by the town clerk.
At that point, on 5th August, there was a debate in the chamber, and the attack on the town clerk's plan was purely political. None of the specious objections which we heard later at the inquiry emerged at all. The whole debate was political and nothing but political, based on the political results. I quote from Councillor Lewis, the Conservative vice-chairman of the Housing Committee:
The Conservative plan had studied the central wards first, moved outward and gave consideration to all existing boundaries. … Throughout their deliberations they were constantly thinking of people within existing wards and the relative strength of the parties in them.
They were indeed.
Another of their councillors said:
The Conservative plan aimed at five Labour and five Conservative wards, with two marginal.
Again quite clearly there was nothing but political considerations in attacking this plan. The Conservatives said of the town clerk's plan,
Our objection is that it gives the Socialists far more than they ever could hope to obtain by … negotiation.
When I say that the whole and only objection to the town clerk's plan was political, I mean that it was political in this sense. Nobody suggested, and I do not think that anybody has suggested, that the town clerk's plan worked out unfairly to the Tories in the sense that it would enable a minority Labour vote to win. It would not. That objection cannot be raised because it is simply not true. The objection was, and always was, that it was unfair to the Conservative Party because it deprived them of the advantage to which they had been accustomed, and that advantage was considerable. I will give the figures.
In the elections over the last 10 years Labour have polled 153,000 votes and got 50 seats. The Tories have polled 150,000 votes, that is 3,000 less, and got 57 seats, which is seven more than Labour. If it is said that that should be adjusted because some of the safer seats are not always contested, and if one brings in an average figure for the uncontested wards on the occasions when they were not contested, one finds that 191,000 Labour

vote produced 66 seats and 175,000 Conservative votes, that is 15,000 fewer, produced 67 seats, or one more. It will be seen, therefore, that the advantage to which the Tories were accustomed was pretty substantial.
If it is preferred to put the matter in terms of percentages, the Tory Party has held Northampton for nine out of the last 10 years with a poll of 47 per cent. as against 53 per cent.; that is, a 6 per cent. minority has enabled the Tory Party to hold Northampton for those nine years and the objection to the town clerk's plan was that it failed to perpetuate this advantage to which the Tory Party had become accustomed. That was all that it was about.
The town clerk's plan was carried. It was published. Objections were invited. It was lodged in the town hall. There were only two objectors. One was the Conservative minority on the council and the other was the Conservative Party in the town. There was not a single ratepayer and at this point no objection to the town clerk's plan purely confined to the criteria had been raised by anybody.
The Labour Party accepted the town clerk's plan and therefore, rightly or wrongly, they were advised that they had no locus standi at the inquiry and that they could not be represented there. They were not represented there and their objections were never heard. This is the advice which we obtained and we were told that we could not be represented because we were not objectors. The question is, was Mr. Verney deceived?

Mr. Hooson: Would the hon. and learned Member kindly tell the House who gave that advice? It seems to me to be the most remarkable advice.

Mr. Paget: It was Transport House.
That was the advice and that was the reason why the Labour Party was not represented. We will look at the question—and this is I think the question which interests the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson)—of how Mr. Verney was deceived. The basic question, of course, was what the inquiry was about. The real objection was throughout and always had been political. That was the only objection that emerged. It deprived the Tory Party of the political advantage to which


they were accustomed. That sole objection was concealed and other quite specious objections with regard to the disturbance of ward boundaries and historical association, not heard of before, were all trotted out. Why? They said that the town clerk's plan was wrong because he had made insufficient allowance for the fact that the inside wards would tend to decrease and the outside wards tend to expand.
On this point I will say that the evidence put forward was quite bogus and must have been known to be bogus. I will give the House a straight example. Let us take the Labour ward of Castle. It had an electorate of 8,400 which, in order to make the Conservative scheme work, had to be cut down to 7,500. Let us see how they did it. They put in builders' intentions as to building within that ward and proposals for demolitions. Councillor Lewis said that 1,260 houses were scheduled for demolition, and as they contained two and a half persons per house that reduced the size of the ward by 3,152, and "that brings us down to the right size". It may, of course, contain two and a half persons per house, but not two and a half electors. The actual figure was about one-third of what Councillor Lewis alleged.
The number of electors living in houses which were due for demolition was 1,100, and that demolition programme was for 10 years and not five years. Councillor Lewis also failed to mention that there were 150 new dwellings in the course of erection within that ward. He also told the council that no more new multi-storeyed flats were going up, which again was not a decision that was taken and was not correct.

Mr. Hooson: What the hon. and learned Member is saying is of great interest, but it seems to me to be the fact that he is now challenging the evidence given before the commissioner. That has never been suggested before.

Mr. Paget: Certainly.

Mr. Hooson: Did the hon. and learned Member make these representations to the Home Secretary when he saw him? If so, why is it that the Home Secretary did not advance this ground as a ground for a fresh inquiry?

Mr. Paget: If the hon. and learned Gentleman will look, he will find all this in the council's resolution, the one forwarded to the Home Secretary. It deals with these matters. I think that my right hon. and learned Friend took the attitude that this must not be prejudged and he must not look at it, but I am putting the situation before the House and pointing out the degree to which this was a ramp.
In order to come down from the 8,400 to the appropriate level, the Conservatives made their assumptions. In fact, however, with all the building schemes and demolition programmes, the average drop in this ward is 33, and the thing has been standing pretty well still.
I take, next, the other ward, Kingsthorp Ward, the number in which, under the Conservatives' scheme, is 5,800, and which they had to put up by 2,000. They argued that there would be a population explosion here, promptly assuming that every builder's intention which they put in evidence would suddenly spring into being. In the ward, in fact, there is one housing scheme for 300 houses which started in 1957, and 140 of these have been completed. Thus, the building rate in that scheme is 20 to 25 houses a year. The other building scheme there was started in 1960, for 170 houses, and 60 or 70 of these have been completed in the four years. In other words, the building rate in this ward has been about 50 or 60 houses a year. Northampton's total building rate is about 400 houses a year, and it is spread round all the peripheral wards. The Tories succeeded in persuading Mr. Verney that roughly the whole of Northampton's building would suddenly take place in those wards where it was convenient for their argument that it should.
That is the way this game was played, and, putting it frankly, the town clerk who was appearing was completely outmanœuvred. This is no criticism of him. Advocacy does not normally form a large part of a town clerk's job. He allowed Mr. Walmsley to say he withdrew political objections and, therefore, there were no politics in this. He allowed him not to call his builders but simply to put in their proposals, so that there was no cross-examination of the builders. Broadly speaking, Mr. Walmsley succeeded in excluding politics from a


scheme which had the political advantage of enabling the Tories—on this our canvass is pretty firm—to rule Northampton by a 7 to 5 majority so long as they succeeded in polling between 40 and 41 per cent. of the votes. This is the scheme in which there are no politics.
I must refer to Mr. Walmsley's words in his final address, by which time, having got away with all this, he must have been feeling rather pleased with himself. He pointed out that one political result would be the amalgamation of two Conservative wards, which would lose the party three seats, and he thought that this was fair. No "con-man" has found more felicitious words to wind up his spiel.
That was the situation as it then stood, and it was only when the new scheme, which was a Conservative scheme, had been approved by the Minister, that, for the first time, we were in a position to object to it. That scheme had never been lodged at the town hall, and objections had never been called for. We were told that, as we were not objectors to the previous scheme, we had no locus standi, and we, therefore, found ourselves at that stage, and for the first time, able to make our objections.
My right hon. and learned Friend, having received the resolution of the town council, and, of course, having received representations from me—I told him what the position was—had to make a decision. In this, he acts in an advisory capacity because he only advises the Minister of Housing and Local Government on what he should put in his orders. My right hon. and learned Friend came to the conclusion that the advice which he had previously given was wrong and that it ought to be changed.

Sir Edward Boyle: Did I understand the hon. and learned Gentleman to say just now that the Conservative counter-proposals were not lodged properly at the town hall? If he did say that, it was contradicted directly and in terms by the Home Secretary last week. His words appear in the second paragraph of column 1299 of HANSARD of 17th February.

Mr. Paget: No, I am not saying that.

Sir S. Summers: The hon. and learned Gentleman did.

Mr. Paget: No. There is no procedure for lodging objections to objections. The taking of objections to objections does not happen. The Conservative proposals were never lodged in that way for objections to be taken. Only when their plan came out as a scheme accepted by the Minister was there anything to object to.

Mr. Hooson: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman confirm that the actual scheme put forward by the Conservatives by way of objection was lodged at the town hall so that the citizens of Northampton had the opportunity to study it?

Mr. Paget: It was lodged in the form of objections to the town clerk's scheme. That is all.

Mr. Hooson: As a counter-scheme.

Mr. Paget: No, as objections to the town clerk's scheme, not as a counter-scheme.
That was the situation in which we found ourselves. It is a little ironic that it should be ground for censuring the integrity of my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary. It is no good saying that charges and speeches of the kind we have heard are not an attack upon my right hon. and learned Friend's integrity. Of course they are.

Mr. Archie Manuel: It would be a good thing if some right hon. and hon. Members opposite had his character.

Mr. Paget: If he has got himself into a mess, this is really because of his extreme integrity. Faced by objections from the Conservative Party, and the Conservative Party alone, to a ward rearrangement proposed by the town clerk, my right hon. and learned Friend is, should think, almost the only one in the House who would be innocent enough to believe that this scheme did not secure a party advantage and that the Conservatives had no political motive. Anyone else meeting such an astonishing proposition might ask the Labour Party, or he might ask the Liberal Party. If my right hon. and learned Friend had asked the Liberals, they would have told him what


the situation was and would have pointed out that it was a political ramp. They knew perfectly well that it was. He might even have asked me. But my right hon. and learned Friend simply accepted that these Conservative proposals were there without any political motive.
Secondly, I would say that it requires great political integrity to be prepared to reverse oneself when one knows that one has done a great injustice. That is precisely what my right hon. and learned Friend did. The other real irony of this case lies in the people who are censuring him for lack of integrity, for disfranchising.
We start off with the Leader of the Opposition. His entire Government constituted a disfranchisement of the people and he knew it. Throughout the whole of his period of office he allowed the country to drift into the economic mess we met—and all in the hope of advantage for the Conservative Party. Now the right hon. Gentleman censures someone. That is an irony indeed.
Then we have the Enahoro team—curious people to be censuring someone for lack of integrity. We also have the right hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. Thorneycroft). Why is he with us for this debate? Because his uncandour about defence matters and armaments when he was Secretary of State has made him too much of a liability to the party opposite in defence debates. Finally, we have the right hon. and learned Member for Wirral (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd). The more and more we learn about Suez the more plain it becomes that, on his performance then, he would make Jack Profumo into a George Washington.
These are the people who have the impertinence to censure my right hon. and learned Friend for lack of integrity. Here was a political swindle. It very nearly came off. The objection was never honestly presented. This scheme was wholly political and never anything else except political. The balance was simply specious and because my right hon. Friend had the honesty to reverse himself when he saw that an injustice had been done his integrity is being censured. I hope that the Motion will be handsomely rejected.

6.13 p.m.

Mr. Nigel Birch: The hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) has taken us up and down many by-ways of Northampton. The odd thing is that he himself disagrees on the real points with the Home Secretary. The Home Secretary made it clear that the Labour Party had every possible opportunity to object. The hon. and learned Gentleman says that he was advised by Transport House that it did not. Perhaps I may, therefore, tender some advice to the Northampton Labour Party. The next time there is this sort of difficulty, might it not consult a competent Q.C.?

Mr. Manuel: The right hon. Gentleman is too funny by half. He does not count now.

Mr. Birch: The main part of the case of the hon. and learned Member for Northampton is that the facts were not put to Mr. Verney. That is not part of the Home Secretary's case. The Home Secretary has never alleged that in any way. He has never alleged that the full facts about the actual building prospects and demolitions were not put before the commissioner. I want to bring out what I think are the real points of this case.
First, clearly the terms of reference of Mr. Verney are common form and they do not include a political clause. They are apolitical and, therefore, it would have been entirely wrong for him to consider political consequences. He was not there to produce a permanent majority for the Labour Party or for the Conservative Party, nor even to squeeze a tiny Liberal sardine into the box. Surely, the commissioner must be apolitical, as must a boundary commission of any sort be apolitical.
Clearly, there can be no boundary change which does not have a political effect. There might be, once in a blue moon, but nine times out of ten a boundary change harms either one party or another. If a political objection that one party's voting strength has been harmed is to be held to be a valid addition to the evidence given to an inquiry, certain things follow. One would never get changes in boundaries at all. For instance, we would never have got rid of the pocket borough of Limehouse. No doubt Lord Attlee could have objected


that boundary changes there would have a bad effect on his vote.
These commissioners have a judicial function and what political consequences may come from their observing their terms of reference are nothing to do with them and should be nothing to do with the Home Secretary either. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary altered his answer a good deal this time from what he said last week. He said today that he was horrified to find that there were real political consequences in Northampton. As he was so horrified what did he do? He cancelled the report and started again.
Of course, there would be political consequences in local government in Northampton, however this was done. It is almost impossible to do something which does not produce political consequences. But to say that, because the commissioner's report produced political consequences, it should not have been made, seems to me to be wrong.
The two main excuses that the Home Secretary made are, first, that the report that he himself accepted should now be rejected because the commissioner did not take into account political consequences and matters which he was expressly not authorised to consider or discuss. Secondly, the Home Secretary has brought sweetness and light to Northampton. Anyone who believes that has a very lively imagination.
In his speech last Wednesday the right hon. and learned Gentleman made a plea of mitigation. His quotation of ridiculus mus, veiled in the obscurity of a learned language, was really the housemaid's baby argument. This is a very serious point. What are the instructions to be for commissioners from now on? Are they to be the same as the previous ones? If a commissioner gets the instructions as they have been so far, he will know that if he finds in accordance with those criteria, and if the result is damaging to the Labour Party, he will be disowned. Will any honourable man consent to serve on these terms? I very much doubt it. I think that any man who consented to serve on such terms after the treatment of Mr. Verney would be risking a lot.
It is not only what is happening now. There are other major boundary issues coming along. I dare say some hon.

Members remember what happened last time there was a really big one. The Labour Party was in office then. The changes followed the Representation of the People Act, 1948. Not only were all the agreements at the Speaker's Conference cancelled but the findings of the boundary commissions were overturned. I end by quoting a remark made at the time by Sir Winston Churchill. He said:
And so, with great reluctance"—
this is speaking of the Bill which overturned the Boundary Commission Report—
long hesitations and with a natural repugnance, it was decided to cheat"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd June, 1948; Vol. 452, c. 1381.]
I hope that we will not have all this all over again. If the independent findings of a boundary commission are to be overturned on political grounds, we shall be sunk.

6.20 p.m.

Mr. Michael Foot: This is a debate on a Motion of censure. It is a serious subject and, whatever disputes we may have about the situation, we can all agree that the subject is one of the most sensitive parts of the political structure of the country. We in the House of Commons are today discussing the sources of authority which the House of Commons has, and which the Northampton Borough Council has, and there cannot be any matter more delicate for us to discuss than the proper and correct methods by which we should be elected.
There was a time in the history of Parliament when a huge part of the time after every election was taken up in debating whether the election had been fairly conducted. There were long arguments in the House about the methods and practices which had been adopted in the elections and about the boundaries and the forms which the elections had taken. I am happy to say that those days have very largely gone, and nobody wants to see them come back. Therefore, the question whether there has been a breach of the proper and fair way of conducting an election to a local authority is a serious matter.
So I approach this subject in what may be described as my quasi-judicial capacity, a bit more quasi than judicial perhaps, but this is always a very tender


line for anyone to draw. This is the spirit in which I approach the debate and I first consider what the Opposition have said.
Let us not forget that the Motion is framed in fairly strong terms. The right hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. Thorneycroft) started by seeking to lower the temperature of the debate and to disarm the criticism which—I hope that the right hon. Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch) will not skedaddle, because I should like to make some references to him and I would not like to say something behind his back which I would much prefer to say to his face, although I propose to say it whether he is here or not.
I was saying that the right hon. Member for Monmouth started at a very low temperature. He went out of his way to say that he was not criticising the integrity or honour of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice). He said at the end of his speech that my right hon. and learned Friend's honour was beyond reproach. But even during the course of his speech there were one or two interjections from some other hon. Members. I heard the hon. Member for Ormskirk (Sir D. Glover), who has now left the Chamber, say, "Caught cheating". I also heard the words "Tammany Hall". That is rather different from saying that this was a mere error of judgment, which was the accusation made by the right hon. Member for Monmouth.
We work our way further backwards—I will come to the right hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Brooke) finally—and we come to the right hon. Member for Flint, West. He finished by recalling what Sir Winston Churchill said about the 1948 arrangements and talked about cheating. Presumably, if he brought in the reference at all, he was trying to connect it with this accusation. So, after starting with the Front Opposition Bench saying that this was merely an error of judgment, we end with the accusation that my right hon. and learned Friend was cheating.
Well, is it? We are quite accustomed to this from right hon. Gentlemen opposite. We have it on the issue of immigration. On the Front Bench they say that, of course, they would not wish to arouse any racial feeling and that nothing would

horrify them more, but that they want to stop immigration as quickly as they can. Then we got further back on the benches and they say, "Stop it next week", and then when we get to the neo-Fascists at the back we get the real racial stuff coming out, and in this case the right hon. Member for Flint, West is almost in the neo-Fascist category.
The right hon. Member made the accusation that my right hon. and learned Friend has engaged in some form of cheating, that there was a taint of Tammany Hall in the business. I must say that if I were to select any member of Her Majesty's Administration to mark down as the Tammany boss of the Labour Party it would not be my right hon. and learned Friend. Right hon. Gentlemen opposite have made an error in that case.
I think that I can explain how this case of mistaken identity arose. It is all revealed in the speech of the right hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson) in the earlier debate. I noticed that the right hon. Member for Monmouth dropped this part of the accusation altogether, but it will be seen from the earlier debate that the right hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington wanted to spread the fire and thought that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government was the real guilty party.
Of course, I must admit that my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) is a rather different kettle of fish from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Newport. My right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East—I know him very well—is a man of the world. He knows his way around. He is a student of that old totalitarian Plato. He knows about these matters. The real quarry in this hunt by the Opposition was my right hon. Friend.
Unfortunately for the Opposition, in the first debate they discovered that he had had nothing to do with it and that, under some formality, he had only issued an order and that the whole decision rested with the Home Secretary. The whole of this manoeuvre on the part of the Opposition started on a false scent. This clumsy St. George set out to hunt the dragon only to discover


that the maiden, radiant in all her innocence, was standing across their path and saying that she had never been molested by the dragon at all.
When the Opposition discovered this error, they should have packed up altogether. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Sir E. Boyle), the spokesman for education in the Conservative Party, back again to his old pastures now—and we are glad to see him there, if not for his own sake, then at least for the one who has been removed—at the end of the debate the other day gave a good indication that his advice to the "Shadow" Cabinet was that, having started on the false scent, it should forget about it as soon as possible. He said that he was "a little anxious" and could not be "absolutely certain" what the Opposition's position was, but there was not the passion of a prospective Motion of censure in his last words in that debate. But, somehow, the Opposition decided to go ahead with it. I cannot understand that, particularly having heard all the facts, now that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) has recited the details, which were not in the full possession of hon. Members before.
I am not surprised that this situation should have arisen. I speak as one who on a previous occasion, to create a new verb, was boundary-commissioned out of the House. I know how these boundary commissions work. It would not be for me to remind the House what was the loss to the nation on that account. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Newport had a similar experience. Boundary commissions are not always infallible, and I hope that that point is sufficiently taken by hon. Members from the examples which I have cited.
It is very often the case that a town clerk who knows the circumstances and conditions in his own town is more likely to arrive at a sensible conclusion than someone coaling from outside, particularly when the someone who comes from outside does not have presented to him all the evidence which he should have to help him make up his mind.
Now the right hon. Member for Flint, West says that it would have been entirely wrong for Mr. Verney to have

taken any account of political considerations. The right hon. Gentleman nods. In that case, Mr. Verney's report, on his own confession, should be condemned because Mr. Verney, in his report, indicates that if political considerations had been advanced he would have had to take them into account. But they were not advanced to him.
Therefore, on that testimony, on the right hon. Gentleman's pure approach to the matter, not only should this have been rejected on the grounds which my right hon. and learned Friend rejected it, but on the grounds that Mr. Verney himself took into account factors which the right hon. Gentleman says should never have been included. As has been indicated most clearly, political factors may be scrutinised in discovering whether proposals are valid and proper, but it does not mean that the political consideration determines the outcome of the inquiry. They are two separate things, and none of the right hon. Members opposite, throughout this and the previous debate, addressed themselves to this distinction. Instead, they have campaigned against my right hon. and learned Friend and said that he is a Tammany boss and a cheat.
I remember very well what happened in 1959. The question arose as to whether a member of the Labour Party was to be appointed Speaker of the House of Commons for the first time in history. There has never been a member of the Labour Party sitting in that eminent position. There were discussions between the two parties—through the usual channels. The indication given by the Conservative Party just after the 1959 election was that it would be prepared to allow a Labour Member to be nominated as Speaker of the House of Commons, but that it would allow only one to be appointed, and that was my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Newport, which seems remarkable testimony to his impartiality.
It is very strange for anyone to come along afterwards and say that my right hon. and learned Friend has, somehow, been transformed in this period and that he has, in the words of the Motion, allowed himself to be subjected to Labour Party pressure. My complaint against my right hon. and learned Friend on many matters which I could cite on


other occasions is that he is not subject to pressure from the Labour Party. I could give him a great list, but I will reserve that for another occasion.
The Conservative Party has made a great error in the way in which it has dealt with this matter, for the reasons which I have given. It has dealt with it shockingly. I do not think that charges of this nature should be bandied about in the manner in which hon. Members opposite have bandied them about. Even so, there is one aspect of what they have done today, one part of their conduct, which, I think, deserves some credit—across the gulf of the House of Commons I would still be prepared to say it—and on which I agree with them.
I do not wish to state the matter in an offensive way which would stir up any trouble, but it is a fact that on this occasion the Conservative Party, in proposing this Motion of censure, has been prepared to agree that the speeches and the vote should take place before dinner rather than after. There cannot be any charges of post-prandial euphoria on this occasion, and I can congratulate them.
I do not wish to say anything which intrudes on the Committee of Privileges or which injures the susceptibilities of hon. Members opposite—this bunch sitting before me which does such collective credit to the Band of Hope, the serried ranks of outraged Rechabites. As I say, I do not wish to say anything offensive to hon. Members opposite, but I congratulate them on agreeing that such a serious matter as a censure Motion should be discussed in circumstances in which all of them are able to enter the debate in the sober manner which we would all wish to see.
But there is another reason why this matter has been presented in this manner, and it is the real reason for the debate. It was given in a speech delivered this week by the right hon. Member for Enfield, West (Mr. Iain Macleod). I am sorry that he is not here. I am not sure what is the etiquette in this matter. I do not know whether one should give advance notice to a Member that one intends to attack him because of his absence. That is what I intend to do, because the right hon. Gentleman is absent. He should be here. He is one of the originators of the Motion. He is a

member of the "shadow" Cabinet which decided to press ahead with it.
The right hon. Gentleman made a speech this week from which emerged the reason why we are having this debate today. On Wednesday, The Guardian reported a speech he had made to the Women's Advisory Conservative Committee. He said that the Leader of the Opposition had given the signal for attack which must be done on all major occasions. This is a major occasion. On this major occasion, the Opposition decided that they must proceed with the attack even though they proposed to put up a spokesman on a censure Motion who was to start his speech by saying that he would make no real accusations; he was merely concerned about an error of judgment.
I do not think that hon. Members opposite should go about the matter in this way. They should not bring their controversies inside the Conservative Party into the House in this manner. Some people say that it is wrong for us to suggest reasons for what is going on in the Conservative Party and why it should bring forward such a Motion as this. Some say that it is quite wrong, as I have heard some of my immoderate friends suggest, that on the benches opposite there is a sordid scramble for personal power.
I do not agree with that at all. What we see going on in the Conservative Party is of highly philosophical content. The only thing which puzzles me is why, in such circumstances, we should have witnessed the departure from the scene of the Socrates from Saffron Walden. He could not put up with the atmosphere any more and so he got out; and I am not surprised.
The fight for what is sometimes described, for lack of a better word, as the soul of the Conservative Party still goes on. I am not suggesting that the right hon. Member for Monmouth is advancing himself as a potential candidate for the leadership. I am not indulging in any fantasies or hyperboles. I am merely trying to analyse why the Conservative Party went ahead with bringing forward such a calamitously foolish censure Motion as this one, which has so little substance and so much malice in it. I want to discover why it has happened.
The reason for it is not to be sought in the conduct of my right hon. and learned Friend. It is to be sought in the manoeuvres which are continuing inside the Conservative Party. Let hon. Members opposite continue their fight for the soul of the Conservative Party elsewhere. Let them do it in the Committee rooms upstairs, in their country houses, in the "Magic Circle", or in Eaton Square. But let them refrain from bringing this bleeding and dishevelled phantom on to the Floor of the House.
Let them at least spare us that and let them spare a long-suffering nation. Let them apply themselves to trying to bring to the Floor of the House the important matters which have to be debated and no longer waste the time of the House on a Motion which appears to be serious, but which, having listened to the right hon. Member for Monmouth, is shown to be a manoeuvre solely for their own purposes.
It may be that this is something which hon. Members opposite are entitled to do. Oppositions may have done it in the past, but—[HON. MEMBERS: "They did."] Some Oppositions have done it in the past. I am thinking back to the previous century.
What I think is somewhat discreditable, particularly when it comes from the right hon. Member for Hampstead and some of his associates, whose behaviour in months past we remember, is that to serve their own party interests they should attack the honour of a right hon. and learned Member of this House. I suggest that the only dignified resort which they have is to withdraw this miserable Motion.

6.40 p.m.

Sir Spencer Summers: I hope that the House will permit one who was the Member for Northampton for four years and, therefore, has a considerable interest in this affair to take a few minutes of the time before we bring this debate to a close.
It is not easy to follow such an entertaining speech as that to which we have just listened. The hon. Member for Devonport—

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Ten years out of time.

Sir S. Summers: I am sorry, I should have said the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot). I know that he cannot represent two places at once and Ebbw Vale will be quite enough for him. The hon. Member was at pains to suggest that we had embarked on a witch hunt and were attempting to capture the wrong quarry. Let me assure him that his speech, at least in my estimation, is nothing but a red-herring drawn across the path to try to deflect serious attention from being paid to what is unquestionably, as the hon. Member said at the outset of his speech, a serious matter.
Unfortunately, I was not able to hear all the debate on this subject on the previous occasion, but I have read every word that was said. Having heard every speech in today's debate, I am more than ever convinced that the Motion on this occasion is abundantly justified and has been proved to be justified by the speeches to which we have just listened, in particular the speech of the Home Secretary. In passing, if the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale finds it difficult to contrast this Motion with the mention of the Home Secretary's name in connection with the Speakership some years ago, the proof is the statement by my right hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. Thorneycroft) today that it is not the Home Secretary's integrity that is impugned but his judgment. That is perfectly consistent.
I do not intend to take much time, but let us try to deal with the essentials. Here was a case that was judged by the Home Secretary to have been recommended according to the criteria laid down and approved on that account. When representations were made to him that political considerations had not been taken into account, he said, in effect, that this was a good reason for embarking upon a fresh inquiry. When we asked whether this deliberate introduction of political considerations meant, in effect, a change in the Home Office instructions, we were told "Oh, no. There is to be no change". When we asked how the new inspector would deal with political considerations, we were told that that would depend upon the inspector himself. Some inspectors would give serious attention to these matters and some


would not. What a negation of responsibility to pass to the inspector to decide what degree of significance to place upon political considerations.
What we have heard today, despite the attempt to conceal it by the Home Secretary, is an announcement that future boundary decisions will be rejected if there is a serious political effect in accepting a recommendation. [An HON. MEMBER: "For the Labour Party."] I was not going to add that, because the important feature in this case is to highlight the change in the situation brought about by the Home Secretary's decision, namely, that in future political results are to count. I do not go further than that by saying that it would count one way and not the other. This is a fundamental change.
When it is claimed that we ought not to be speaking like that and that my right hon. Friend the former Home Secretary—I think that "purist" was the word used a few minutes ago—ought not to be saying that, again the Home Secretary has failed to appreciate the point, which has been made more than once—I repeat it because he has failed to appreciate it or has deliberately not wanted to—concerning the difference between a proposal brought forward for improper motives and a proposal which is brought forward and which may have significant political results. Proposals that are brought forward for improper motives solely for political reasons are properly rejected. Proposals that are brought forward in accordance with the criteria laid down, which may or may not have a political result, ought not to be rejected on that account. It cannot be emphasised too strongly that the case that we make on this side in connection with the phrase "political considerations" is that they have no place in the motives building up the plan and they should be ignored in so far as the results themselves are concerned.
As has been said earlier, it is not Northampton alone which has aroused the interest of this topic. It is the effect of such a situation on future ward decisions. From what we have heard from the Home Secretary, I find it almost impossible to decide whether another verdict from an inspector which gave an objectionable result to Labour would be re-

jected, for the simple reason that every argument advanced today appears to be that if it has a major political result it should be rejected. If the next inquiry has the same result, the arguments advanced today will surely hold equally good the next time.
From this, we must deduce that the only recommendation in future which will be acceptable to the Home Secretary is one which preserves the status quo. The hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget), who is not in his place, took objection to the status quo. He said that the Conservatives had a built-in majority to which they were not entitled because of the relationship between seats and votes cast. I hope, therefore, that when the next inquiry is held, if this Motion is not carried, we shall not have a repetition of the nonsense that we have heard today. It is a serious matter that confidence in the boundaries of wards and constituencies should be subject to doubt and suspicion. This is inevitably the consequence when vacillation takes place at the Home Office.
I deplore very much that this has happened and I consider that the Motion is amply justified by all that has been said on this side.

6.48 p.m.

Sir John Hobson: We have had a very good debate, at a high level, on an important topic, apart, perhaps, from the interlude of the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot), whose agreeable acrobatics we much enjoyed although they had little to do with the subject of the debate.
The hon. Member began by saying that this was a grave subject and he finished by giving us a pantomime. The bit I particularly enjoyed was the confirmation which I got from his documents on his right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) that I was quite right, apparently, in his view, to have made inquiries on the last occasion about whether he might have had anything to do with it.
We are engaged on a much more serious issue and I should like to repeat, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. Thorneycroft) said, that


this is not—it certainly is not in my view—in any way a censure upon the integrity of the Home Secretary. All we are saying is that he made an error of judgment, that it is easy to make an error of judgment as a Minister, but that he is now sticking to that error of judgment when it has been fully explained and debated and that we consider that he is quite wrong to stick to that decision, not only for the reasons of the decision itself, but because of the consequences which it carries with it. It is both the wrong-headedness of the decision and the consequences which it will have, both generally on future decisions and on the actual Borough of Northampton, that merit the censure of this House.

Mr. Ivor Richard: Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman like to tell the House how he reconciles what he has just said, that this is not a Motion of censure on the integrity of the Home Secretary, with the Motion, which specifically
deplores the action of the Secretary of State for the Home Department in yielding to Labour Party political pressure …
and so on? That is the charge. Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman like to explain how he thinks that can be regarded as an error of judgment?

Sir J. Hobson: The error of judgment was in giving way to the Labour Party, which wanted a new inquiry. [An HON. MEMBER: "Is that all?"] Certainly that is all. We say that this is the error of judgment which the right hon. and learned Gentleman made.
On reading the life of Spencer Perceval, who was murdered in the Lobby of this honourable House, and who was the Member for Northampton, one realises that in the late eighteenth century the Borough of Northampton had a well-deserved reputation as one of the most tumultuous Parliamentary constituencies in the country. The situation was further complicated at that time when the party struggle extended to municipal affairs. My knowledge of Northampton is that even after the eighteenth century it has been a place where feelings have run very high in political matters, but it has not recently had its municipal affairs debated on the Floor of the House of Commons. The matter comes here now because the right hon. and learned Gentleman, as all who have listened to the debate know, has

decided to reverse the decision which he originally took on 23rd December last.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman explained during the last debate, and he explained again today, what he considers to be the justification for that decision. We all know the enormous burden that he bears. No doubt he had an "In Tray" with a vast pile of other things to consider, and other action to take. No doubt one or other of his Ministerial colleagues who remain under the blessed screen of anonymity sent him a note. No doubt he thought at the time, I am sure genuinely, that he was doing the right thing. What we complain about is that having had the opportunity to reconsider it, having had the implications explained to him, he is sticking to it, and taking the consequences of it both for the future of such cases, and for the actual electors of the Borough of Northampton.
How does the Home Secretary put his defence? Much as I would like to think that he had good grounds for justifying himself, I cannot say that he has put forward any basis at all for doing what he has decided to do. He relies on the way in which Mr. Verney approached this matter for his justification, and he interprets the words which Mr. Verney used in his report as meaning that there were either political motives which were not disclosed to Mr. Verney, or that there were political results which Mr. Verney did not consider.
We have had the relevant passages of the report read on many occasions, and I shall not read them again, but there can be no doubt at all now that what Mr. Verney was endeavouring to say had nothing to do with the consequences of one scheme or the other. Those passages on which the Home Secretary has relied went solely to the question whether one or other of the two schemes put forward had been put forward for political motives or not, and if one reads those two passages, one sees that they mean nothing else at all.
If that is the right interpretation, the Home Secretary cannot be justified in ordering a new inquiry because, first, he said himself that he does not accept that either the town clerk or Mr. Walmsley was acting from any improper motive at all, and he imputes no improper motives of any sort to either of them in the way in which they put forward and advanced


their arguments, and the way in which they conducted the inquiry. I know that Mr. Walmsley and others are grateful for the attitude which the Home Secretary has taken, and I am sure that it is the right one.
I think that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is amply justified in that by the report of Mr. Verney himself, who begins his conclusions with the words:
Both the schemes which were put forward at the inquiry were honest attempts to divide the County Borough into wards in strict accordance with the criteria laid down.
Mr. Verney had seen both the town clerk and Mr. Walmsley, and the witnesses on both sides. He had seen the town clerk cross-examined. He had seen Mr. Walmsley conducting the case, and he had his two Conservative councillors who gave evidence being cross-examined.
I therefore think that with all that information before him Mr. Verney was satisfied that each of the two proponents of the proposals and counter-proposals was genuinely trying to do nothing but apply the criteria laid down by the Home Secretary. The right hon. and learned Gentleman has accepted that, and on that basis there can be no reason for—and he does not attempt to justify it—a new inquiry to discover whether the motives of one or other of the parties was suspect and ought to be looked at.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman interprets Mr. Verney's words—and I think that he does so wrongly, on a fair interpretation—as meaning that Mr. Verney was taking note of the fact that there would be political consequences which were not drawn to his attention, and that for that reason there ought to be a new inquiry because those political consequences should be looked at. It is this decision which disturbs us, and which has caused us to put down this Motion of censure on the judgment of the Home Secretary, because it is saying nothing else than this, that if a warding scheme is examined by an independent inquiry and accepted by the Home Secretary and his staff—as happened in this case in the letter of 23rd January—on its merits as fulfilling the criteria of the Home Secretary's letter which contained nothing to do with political consequences, nevertheless one should have another inquiry to look at the political consequences. Despite the denials of the

Home Secretary, the implications of that are that we are making a major departure in policy on all questions affecting ward boundaries, because it will become relevant in future to argue what are to be the political consequences, whatever may happen to the application of the criteria?
That brings me to the question which the Home Secretary has been asked, and which I hope the Under-Secretary will answer. What are to be the terms of the new inquiry? Are they to be the same terms, the orthodox terms, as they have been called? Are they to be the usual terms? If they are to be the usual terms, let us be quite clear that this new inquiry is pointless, because it will be justified in excluding any evidence as to political consequences, and the Home Secretary has accepted that many of these inquiries proceed on the basis that any attempt to discuss the problems of warding on a political basis can be rejected as wholly irrelevant.
One of the things that Mr. Verney himself said—and I think that it is right to draw the attention of the House to it—is that the two schemes have to be judged
solely according to whether or not they succeed in satisfying the criteria which have to be applied. The authors of each scheme have had these criteria clearly in mind.
That is what the new inquiry may do.
The Home Secretary was asked, I think by the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson), whether it was suggested that Mr. Verney had taken any evidence into consideration which ought to have been excluded, and he very fairly said that he had not, that he had considered only proper evidence; and we know that it is proper for a new inquiry to exclude any political evidence at all. Thus, we are to have another inquiry so that evidence which can quite properly be excluded, and very frequently and usually is, might be tendered, with the possible result that it might be rejected by the new inquiry.
I think that this goes deeply against our processes of fairness and democratic life. I think that the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale was right in saying that here we touch a sensitive point as to how our democracy is to run, and whether we are to fall back into the sort of atmosphere in which every


election was contested on the Floor of the House at the end of the eighteenth century.
I am sure that many experienced people—not only in Transport House, but in the Conservative Central Office—who give advice about these local government boundaries frequently advise people that the one thing that should not be done is to embark upon an inquiry into the political implications of a particular scheme, one way or another, but that the only safe course for such inquiries is to proceed on the application of the Home Secretary's criteria as they have always been laid down.
Where do we get to if we do not do that? How is the wretched inquirer to consider the political implications? Are the respective political parties to produce their canvassers' returns for each street in the borough so that the inquirer may consider, on the evidence of the two political parties, what is the likely political complexion not only of a street but half a street, or even a few houses? That is where we are getting to if we are going to see whether the political consequences, one way or the other, are of importance and ought to be taken into account. This is why we feel such deep anxiety that the Home Office and the Home Secretary are embarking upon an entirely new departure which will radically alter the way in which all these inquiries are conducted and will introduce a matter which ought never to be considered at such inquiries.
The Home Secretary took his decision to embark upon this course upon one other ground which I find wholly surprising. He said that he thought it would be desirable, in the interests of setting controversy at rest in Northampton, to reopen the whole matter. It amounts to little other than saying that the Labour Party having been displeased, he thought that it would continue to be displeased unless there were another inquiry—because he never had any information that anybody else was displeased. He never had representations from any other person in the Borough of Northampton. The truth is that his new decision has created far more resentment than ever existed before, and it is a resentment that is felt generally throughout Northampton, on both sides, and has produced a situ-

ation in which feelings are running far more highly than ever before.
The only other point to which I want to draw the attention of the House is that this decision is not only to be criticised because the Home Secretary's defence of it is wholly unjustified. Motive is not imputed, and all that we are doing is to import political considerations into inquiries where they should not be. The consequences of proceeding in this way are serious for the actual borough which is affected. Surely the overriding object of this exercise ought to have been to provide for elections before the appointed day. This was the very purpose that the Home Secretary set out in his letter of 23rd February. It was regarded by him as of the greatest importance that the 10,000 new voters in the Borough of Northampton should not be deprived of their right to vote for a period of six weeks.
In all new redrawings of boundaries—and there will be many in the immediate future—I am sure that the object of all Ministers, of any Government, must be to try to see that the new borough, with its new boundaries and extensions, together with the old area from which those extensions have been removed, are able to begin their lives with a newly elected council on the basis of a new warding system applicable to the area as it is about to be. This desirable, laudable and overriding object is wholly thrown away by the decision of the Home Secretary.
Not only that; we are proceeding upon a rather odd basis. I have already questioned whether the method of obtaining a new warding for the new borough as it will be after All Fools' Day next is satisfactory, or whether it is not ultra vires. The Minister of Housing and Local Government has already laid on the Table of this House an order directing the councillors of the Borough of Northampton to pass by a majority of their total number a petition to Her Majesty the Queen for the re-warding of their borough, and he has provided, further, that if they do not do as they are told by the Minister he will proceed as though such a petition had been passed. Therefore, if no petition were passed, it would be quite possible to announce that he intended to re-ward the borough as though it had been passed,


and proceed without this new inquiry ever having been held at all.
There is another point about the consequences. We know from the order which has been tabled that no elections will be held before the expected date on which the new inquiry will have completed its activities and its results will have been considered. The Home Secretary expects this to be by the end of October. Therefore, the whole of the rest of the voters of Northampton—about 73,000—will be deprived for about six months of the right to exercise their vote and to change their councillors if they so desire in the spring of each year.
Not only that; the majority of two on the Labour council is cemented on the borough by the fact that if there are any casual vacancies by reason of illness, resignation, or any similar event, there will be no by-election. If there were a by-election and the Conservatives won it, control of the borough would return to the Conservatives, whereas if a casual vacancy were not filled the borough would remain under Labour control. This is a remarkable way in which to proceed as a consequence of a decision taken upon such flimsy grounds.
Another matter which is perhaps not very important, but which the House ought to know about, is that the first proposals which the Labour Party supported were put forward by the town clerk, which means, presumably, that the costs of that inquiry will be borne by the ratepayers of Northampton. The Conservative Party had to bear its own costs of the first inquiry. What will happen about the costs of the second inquiry? Will the ratepayers of Northampton have the pleasure of contributing to a second lot of costs to put forward, once again, the town clerk's plan? It is clear that the Conservative Party will have to bear the costs of the second inquiry, which can do no more than hack over the ground already so fully considered by Mr. Verney, who, as is clear, came to his decision upon the merits, having considered all the facts laid before him.
I divert here to say a word about some of the points made by the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget). He relied upon the resolution of the council to show that certain

facts—"bogus evidence", was his phrase—had been put forward, and he accused a solicitor of the High Court of being "a con man." I was very glad to hear the Home Secretary entirely repudiate any such suggestion and say that no false evidence was put forward.
The truth is that the hon. and learned Member and those members of the Labour Party who discussed this matter entirely failed to appreciate that the figures given in relation to the ward in question concerned the proposed ward which would be greatly extended and not the existing ward. It is this misapprehension which has given rise to numerous accusations of bogus evidence and misinformation. One wonders whether such evidence as this was not the foundation of the charge of misinformation in the original letter of the Home Secretary.

Mr. Paget: That is entirely wrong. My figures referred entirely to the proposed wards, and not to the wards in the town clerk's plan.

Sir J. Hobson: The hon. and learned Member referred to some figures, but if one reads the whole of the report of Mr. Verney one sees that he was quite aware, from the evidence given to him, of the difference between the five-year plan and the ten-year plan, and the rate of development, and that he went into all the figures with meticulous care. I am assured by the Conservatives that every one of those figures can be justified from the planning books or from the builders whose evidence was given. They have been accepted by the Home Secretary and I am sure that it is right that that should be so.
This is really a short point. Are we, in future, to embark on a situation in which the result in terms of politics of every drawing of an electoral boundary, be it local government or political, is to be subject to argument and reversal because it does, or it does not, suit one or other of the parties? That is the fatal course upon which we are now likely to embark. We say the only safe course is to stick to the orthodox criteria and inquire whether they have been properly applied and choose of two schemes the scheme appropriate to apply them.
This is what was done and what the Home Secretary, in his letter of 23rd December, accepted had been done. In


that acceptance he did not attach any importance at all to the political results of that inquiry. He was quite right not to do so then, and he has committed a serious error in reversing that decision.

7.11 p.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. George Thomas): This has been a censure debate with a difference. It started with an apology. It started with an assurance from the right hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. Thorneycroft) who asserted that in no way was he casting any doubts upon the integrity or the honour of my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary. I should have been surprised had the right hon. Gentleman said that he was—I should have been very surprised. There has been a note of apology running along the benches opposite as hon. Members on the other side of the House sought to explain that, unlike in other censure debates, where we have dealt with great issues of principle, here they believed that the judgment of my right hon. and learned Friend was wrong, and they had used all the machinery of a major Parliamentary occasion and tabled a Motion of Censure.
In this debate we have had recited for us again some of the arguments advanced in the debate on this subject which was held a week ago. The right hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Brooke) asked a question a week ago and he took part in the debate tonight when he told us what he would have done. The right hon. Gentleman regards it as an offence that my right hon. and learned Friend, having issued a decision and received representations from a local authority, said that he would give further consideration to it. The right hon. Member for Hampstead said that once he had made up his mind he would listen to no representations at all, and, of course, this is exactly the way in which the right hon. Gentleman treated local authorities.
The right hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson) complained about the disfranchisement of some electors in Northampton. He complained that they would be unrepresented. The right hon. Member for Hampstead was long enough at the Home Office and the right hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington has been in the House long enough

to know that it is common policy to annex added areas to existing wards with councillors apportioned to wards containing electors who have taken no part at all in their election. The right hon. Member for Hampstead was himself responsible for legislation and for helping to push through this House legislation which made that sort of thing possible. He will also know that hon. Members opposite have made much of this—that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government has sent a circular to the local authority.
The right hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington, the former Attorney-General repeated—and so obviously he makes much of it—the argument that there was something wrong about my right hon. Friend requiring a local authority to submit a petition. A week ago the right hon. and learned Gentleman said:
How, I ask, can a Minister of the Crown announce that if the legally elected representatives do not do what they are told to do by him, he will proceed under an Act of Parliament, which requires a resolution, as if that resolution had been passed, when, in fact, it has not? Is not this wholly unlawful and without authority or precedent of any sort?"— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th February, 1965: Vol 706, c. 1293.]
The right hon. and learned Gentleman ought to know that there are abundant precedents and that this procedure is lawful and has full authority. I am surprised that tonight he should have repeated a charge which can be so easily refuted by quoting from Acts part of which he was responsible for introducing in the House and under which exactly the same procedure has been followed during recent years. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman will know, Schedule 11 of the London Government Act makes provision for just the very thing we have been talking about. The Luton Order and the Solihull Order of 1963 and the Stoke-on-Trent Order of 1964 all contain provisions that the right hon. and learned Gentleman thought were non-existent and so the Minister was acting without authority.

Mr. Graham Page: rose—

Hon. Members: Sit down.

Mr. Thomas: I am afraid the choice is of either being courteous to the hon.


Gentleman or of receiving the wrath of hon. Members who thought that they were going to vote 20 minutes ago.

Mr. Graham Page: The hon. Member has quoted a number of Orders and the London Government Act. This Order, which was placed in the Vote Office only today, having come into operation three days ago, was made under Section 25 of the Local Government Act, 1933. Were those other Orders made under that Section?

Hon. Members: Answer.

Mr. Thomas: Wait a moment. A question has been asked and we will see how it can be answered. The fact is that there is a precedent. It is a clear answer to what the right hon. and learned Gentleman said. I am going to give the authority. Paragraph 11 of Schedule 3 to the 1963 Act—the London Government Act—placed on the Essex, Kent and Surrey County Councils the duty to submit a representation under Section 11 of the Local Government Act, 1933, as soon as may be after the passing of the Act of 1963. Far be it from me to try to teach the hon. Member the law, but it seems that anyone can teach it to him.

Mr. Graham Page: Section 25.

Mr. Thomas: All right. I will leave that point now.
The right hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington complained that because there could be no by-elections between now and October, we were therefore cementing the Labour majority of two. When vacancies come, whether by death or resignation, by-elections will not be held. Therefore, he says, this means that we are cementing the Labour majority in Northampton. That argument would be right if we accept the assumption that Providence always has a Left bias. That is the assumption which the right hon. and learned Gentleman was making. The other argument on which we have gone to and fro, both tonight and last week, was whether my right hon. Friend by reaching that decision which he did in February, has changed the policy of the Home Office. I am very glad that tonight we have heard none of the charges which we heard last week of political chicanery against my right hon. and learned Friend.

The hon. Member for Northants, South (Mr. Arthur Jones) said that last week. There were some very ugly words, but I presume, from what has been said by the Opposition Front Bench today, that there is no encouragement by the Front Bench for claims that my right hon. Friend has acted in anything but an honourable capacity in reaching this decision.
There have been suggestions that the boundaries of Northampton will be shaped by political considerations in the future. The truth, which no one knows better than the right hon. and learned Member for Warwick and Leamington, is that the commissioner who will sit to discuss the boundaries and to hear the appeals produced by various people in Northampton will be quite as impartial as the last, and will work on the same terms as the last, but he will have the added benefit of knowing what is behind proposals and he will know the feeling of the local people.
Hon. Gentlemen opposite know that discussions will be held at the headquarters of the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party and the Labour Party and that they will all be submitting their plans and proposals to the commissioner. We know that there is nothing dishonourable in the commissioner being aware of all the issues which are at stake.
The other side has made much ado about nothing on this question. In the exercise of his duties, my right hon. and learned Friend has behaved with the care which the House has grown to expect from him and which we all know he brings to his work. This issue is not one which has been decided on political grounds, but we believe that it is in the best interests of Northampton that another inquiry should be held.

Mr. Graham Page: rose—

Hon. Members: Sit down.

Mr. Thomas: When I remember—

Mr. Graham Page: rose—

Mr. Thomas: Thirty seconds and I will be sitting down. I remember the record of the right hon. Member for Hampstead at the Home Office and I recall that, despite all the upheavals, he went through that period of office without a personal vote of censure being tacked on to him.


[HON. MEMBERS: "Why not? "] We may have been mistaken. But we believe that issues of censure should be confined to issues of principle or a major breach in the standards of the House. That charge is not thrown against my right hon. and learned Friend. [HON. MEMBERS: "It is."] I believe that in an effort to have their weekly Motion of censure, the Opposition have scraped the bottom of the barrel today. I hope that the vote we are

to have will reflect indignation from that side of the House as well as from this.

Mr. Graham Page: Before the Joint Under-Secretary of State sits down—

Mr. Speaker: There is every indication that the hon. Gentleman has sat down.

Question put:—

The House divided: Ayes 291, Noes 299.

DivisionNo.63.]
AYES
[7.26 p.m.


Agnew, Commander Sir Peter
Currie, G. B. H.
Hill, J. E. B. (S. Norfolk)


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Dalkeith, Earl of
Hirst, Geoffrey


Allen, Robert (Paddington, S.)
Dance, James
Hobson, Rt. Hn. Sir John


Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Davies, Dr. Wyndham (Perry Barr)
Hogg, Rt. Hn. Quintin


Amery, Rt. Hn. Julian
d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Hooson, H. E.


Anstruther-Gray, Rt. Hn. Sir W.
Dean, Paul
Hordern, Peter


Astor, John
Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F.
Hornby, Richard


Atkins, Humphrey
Digby, Simon Wingfield
Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hn. Dame P.


Awdry, Daniel
Dodds-Parker, Douglas
Howard, Hn. G. R. (St. Ives)


Baker, W. H. K.
Doughty, Charles
Howe, Geoffrey (Bebington)


Barber, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Douglas-Home, Rt. Hn. Sir Alec
Hunt, John (Bromley)


Barlow, Sir John
Drayson, G. B.
Hutchison, Michael Clark


Batsford, Brian
du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward
Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)


Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton
Eden, Sir John
Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)


Bell, Ronald
Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Jennings, J. C.


Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torquay)
Elliott, R. W. (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne,N.)
Johnson Smith, G.


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gos &amp; Fhm)
Emery, Peter
Johnston, Russell (Inverness)


Berkeley, Humphry
Errington, Sir Eric
Jones, Arthur (Northants, S.)


Berry, Hn. Anthony
Farr, John
Jones, Rt. Hn. Aubrey (Hall Green)


Bessell, Peter
Fell, Anthony
Jopling Michael


Biffen, John
Fisher, Nigel
Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith


Biggs-Davison, John
Fletcher-Cooke, Charles (Darwen)
Kaberry, Sir Donald


Bingham, R. M.
Fletcher-Cooke, Sir John (S'pton)
Kerby, Capt. Henry


Birch, Rt. Hn. Nigel
Forrest, George
Kershaw, Anthony


Black, Sir Cyril
Foster, Sir John
Kilfedder, James A.


Blaker, Peter
Fraser, Rt.Hn.Hugh (St'fford &amp; Stone)
Kimball, Marcus


Bossom, Hn. Clive
Fraser, Ian (Plymouth, Sutton)
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)


Box, Donald
Galbraith, Hn. T. G. D.
Kitson, Timothy


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. J.
Gammans, Lady
Lagden, Godfrey


Boyle, Rt. Hn. Sir Edward
Gibson-Watt, David
Lambton, Viscount


Braine, Bernard
Giles, Rear-Admiral Morgan
Lancaster, Col. C. G.


Brewis, John
Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, Central)
Langford-Holt, Sir John


Brinton, Sir Tatton
Gilmour, Sir John (East Fife)
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry


Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. Sir Walter
Glover, Sir Douglas
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)


Brooke, Rt. Hn. Henry
Glyn, Sir Richard
Litchfield, Capt. John


Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)
Godber, Rt. Hn. J. B.
Lloyd, Ian (P'tsm'th, Langstone)


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Goodhart, Philip
Lloyd, Rt. Hn. Selwyn (Wirral)


Bryan, Paul
Goodhew, Victor
Longbottom, Charles


Buchanan-Smith, Alick
Gower, Raymond
Longden, Gilbert


Buck, Antony
Grant, Anthony
Loveys, Walter H.


Bullus, Sir Eric
Grant-Ferris, R.
Lubbock, Eric


Burden, F. A.
Gresham-Cooke, R.
Lucas, Sir Jocelyn


Butcher, Sir Herbert
Grieve, Percy
McAdden, Sir Stephen


Buxton, R. C.
Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)
Mackie, George Y. (C'ness &amp; S'land)


Carlisle, Mark
Griffiths, Peter (Smethwick)
McLaren, Martin


Carr, Rt. Hn. Robert
Grimond, Rt. Hn. J.
Maclean, Sir Fitzroy


Cary, Sir Robert
Gurden, Harold
Macleod, Rt. Hn. Iain


Channon, H. P. G.
Hall, John (Wycombe)
McMaster, Stanley


Chataway, Christopher
Hall-Davis, A. G. F.
McNair-Wilson, Patrick


Chichester-Clark, R.
Hamilton, Marquess of (Fermanagh)
Maginnis, John E.


Clark, Henry (Antrim, N.)
Hamilton, M. (Salisbury)
Maitland, Sir John


Clark, William (Nottingham, S.)
Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N. W.)
Marlowe, Anthony


Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmth, W.)
Harris, Reader (Heston)
Marples, Rt. Hn. Ernest


Cole, Norman
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Marten, Neil


Cooke, Robert
Harvey, Sir Arthur Vere (Maccles'd)
Mathew, Robert


Cooper, A. E.
Harvey, John (Walthamstow, E.)
Maude, Angus


Corfield, F. V.
Harvie Anderson, Miss
Mawby, Ray


Costain, A. P.
Hastings, Stephen
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.


Courtney, Cdr. Anthony
Hawkins, Paul
Maydon, Lt.-Cmdr. S. L. C.


Craddock, Sir Beresford (Spelthorne)
Hay, John
Meyer, Sir Anthony


Crawley, Aidan
Heald, Rt. Hn. Sir Lionel
Mills, Peter (Torrington)


Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. Sir Oliver
Heath, Rt. Hn. Edward
Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)


Crowder, F. P.
Hendry, Forbes
Miscampbell, Norman


Curran, Charles
Higgins, Terence L.
Mitchell, David


Cunningham, Sir Knox
Hiley, Joseph
Monro, Hector




More, Jasper
Rees-Davies, W. R.
Thorneycroft, Rt. Hn. Peter


Morgan, W. G.
Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David
Thorpe, Jeremy


Morrison, Charles (Devizes)
Ridley, Hn. Nicholas
Tiley, Arthur (Bradford, W.)


Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles
Ridsdale, Julian
Tilney, John (Wavertree)


Munro-Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Roberts, Sir Peter (Heeley)
Turton, Rt. Hn. R. H.


Murton, Oscar
Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)
Tweedsmuir, Lady


Neave, Airey
Roots, William
van Straubenzee, W. R.


Nicholls, Sir Harmar
Royle, Anthony
Vaughan-Morgan, Rt. Hn. Sir John


Nicholson, Sir Godfrey
Russell, Sir Ronald
Vickers, Dame Joan


Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael
St. John-Stevas, Norman
Walder, David (High Peak)


Nugent, Rt. Hn. Sir Richard
Scott-Hopkins, James
Walker, Peter (Worcester)


Onslow, Cranley
Sharples, Richard
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek


Orr, Capt. L. P. S.
Shepherd, William
Wall, Patrick


Orr-Ewing, Sir Ian
Sinclair, Sir George
Walters, Dennis


Osborn, John (Hallam)
Smith, Dudley (Br'ntf'd &amp; Chiswick)
Ward, Dame Irene


Osborne, Sir Cyril (Louth)
Smyth, Rt. Hn. Brig. Sir John
Weatherill, Bernard


Page, John (Harrow, W.)
Spearman, Sir Alexander
Webster, David


Page, R. Graham (Crosby)
Speir, Sir Rupert
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Pearson, Sir Frank (Clitheroe)
Stainton, Keith
Whitelaw, William


Peel, John
Stanley, Hn. Richard
Williams, Sir Rolf Dudley (Exeter)


Percival, Ian
Stodart, J. A.
Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)


Peyton, John
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir Malcolm
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Pickthorn, Rt. Hn. Sir Kenneth
Studholme, Sir Henry
Wise, A. R.


Pike, Miss Mervyn
Summers, Sir Spencer
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Pitt, Dame Edith
Talbot, John E.
Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard


Pounder, Rafton
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)
Woodhouse, Hn. Christopher


Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch
Taylor, Edward M. (G'gow,Cathcart)
Woodnutt, Mark


Price, David (Eastleigh)
Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)
Wylie, N. R.


Prior, J. M. L.
Teeling, Sir William
Yates, William (The Wrekin)


Quennell, Miss J. M.
Temple, John M.
Younger, Hn. George


Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James
Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret



Rawlinson, Rt. Hn. Sir Peter
Thomas, Sir Leslie (Canterbury)
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Redmayne, Rt. Hn. Sir Martin
Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon.S.)
Mr. MacArthur and Mr.Pym.




NOES


Abse, Leo
Crosland, Anthony
Gregory, Arnold


Albu, Austen
Crossman, Rt. Hn. R. H. S.
Grey, Charles


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Cullen, Mrs. Alice
Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)


Alldritt, W. H.
Dalyell, Tam
Griffiths, Rt. Hn. James (Llanelly)


Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)
Darling, George
Griffiths, Will (M'chester Exchange)


Armstrong, Ernest
Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)
Gunter, Rt. Hn. R. J.


Atkinson, Norman
Davies, Harold (Leek)
Hale, Leslie


Bacon, Miss Alice
Davies, S.O. (Merthyr)
Hamilton, James (Bothwell)


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
de Freitas, Sir Geoffrey
Hamilton, William (West Fife)


Barnett, Joel
Delargy, Hugh
Hamling, William (Woolwich, W.)


Baxter, William
Dell, Edmund
Hannan, William


Beaney, Alan
Dempsey, James
Harper, Joseph


Bellenger, Rt. Hn. F. J.
Diamond, John
Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)


Bence, Cyril
Dodds, Norman
Hart, Mrs. Judith


Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Doig, Peter
Hattersley, Roy


Bennett, J. (Glasgow, Bridgeton)
Donnelly, Desmond
Hayman, F. H.


Binns, John
Driberg, Tom
Hazell, Bert


Bishop, E. S.
Duffy, A. E. P.
Healey, Rt. Hn. Denis


Blackburn, F.
Dunn, James A.
Heffer, Eric S.


Blenkinsop, Arthur
Dunnett, Jack
Henderson, Rt. Hn. Arthur


Boardman, H.
Edelman, Maurice
Herbison, Rt. Hn. Margaret


Boston, T. G.
Edwards, Rt. Hn. Ness (Caerphilly)
Hill, J. (Midlothian)


Bowden, Rt. Hn. H. W. (Leics S. W.)
Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Hobden, Dennis (Brighton, K'town)


Boyden, James
English, Michael
Holman, Percy


Braddock, Mrs. E. M.
Ennals, David
Horner, John


Bradley, Tom
Ensor, David
Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas


Bray, Dr. Jeremy
Evans, Albert (Islington, S. W.)
Howarth, Harry (Wellingborough)


Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.
Evans, Ioan (Birmingham, Yardley)
Howarth, Robert L. (Bolton, E.)


Brown, Rt. Hn. George (Belper)
Fernyhough, E.
Howell, Denis (Small Heath)


Brown, Hugh D. (Glasgow, Provan)
Finch, Harold (Bedwellty)
Howie, W.


Brown, R. W. (Shoreditch &amp; Fbury)
Fitch, Alan (Wigan)
Hoy, James


Buchan, Norman (Renfrewshire, W.)
Fletcher, Sir Eric (Islington, E.)
Hughes, Cledwyn (Anglesey)


Buchanan, Richard
Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)


Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)
Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)
Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)


Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)
Floud, Bernard
Hunter, Adam (Dunfermline)


Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James
Foley, Maurice
Hunter, A. E. (Feltham)


Carmichael, Neil
Foot, Sir Dingle (Ipswich)
Hynd, H. (Accrington)


Carter-Jones, Lewis
Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)
Hynd, John (Attercliffe)


Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara
Ford, Ben
Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)


Chapman, Donald
Fraser, Rt. Hn. Tom (Hamilton)
Jackson, Colin


Coleman, David
Freeson, Reginald
Janner, Sir Barnett


Conlan, Bernard
Galpern, Sir Myer
Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Garrett, W. E.
Jeger, George (Goole)


Cousins, Rt. Hn. Frank
Garrow, A.
Jeger, Mrs. Lena (H'b'n&amp;St.P'cras,S.)


Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Ginsburg, David
Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)


Crawshaw, Richard
Gourlay, Harry
Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)


Cronin, John
Greenwood, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)







Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.)
Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick (SheffieldPk)
Skeffinglon, Arthur


Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Murray, Albert
Slater, Mrs. Harriet (Stoke, N.)


Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)
Neal, Harold
Small, William


Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)
Newens, Stan
Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)


Kelley, Richard
Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)
Snow, Julian


Kenyon, Clifford
Noel-Baker, Rt. Hn. Philip (Derby,S.)
Solomons, Henry


Kerr, Mrs. Anne (R'ter &amp; Chatham)
Norwood, Christopher
Soskice, Rt. Hn. Sir Frank


Kerr, Dr. David (W'worth, Central)
Oakes, Gordon
Spriggs, Leslie


Lawson, George
Ogden, Eric
Steele, Thomas


Leadbitter, Ted
O'Malley, Brian
Stewart, Rt. Hn. Michael


Ledger, Ron
Oram, Albert E. (E. Ham S.)
Stonehouse, John


Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick (Newton)
Orbach, Maurice
Stones, William


Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)
Orme, Stanley
Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R.(Vauxhall)


Lever, Harold (Cheetham)
Oswald, Thomas
Summerskill, Dr. Shirley


Lever, L. M. (Ardwick)
Owen, will
Swain, Thomas


Lewis, Arthur (West Ham, N.)
Page, Derek (King's Lynn)
Swingler, Stephen


Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Paget, R. T.
Symonds, J. B.


Lipton, Marcus
Palmer, Arthur
Thomas, George (Cardiff, W.)


Lomas, Kenneth
Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles
Thomas, Iorwerth (Rhondda, W.)


Loughlin, Charles
Pargiter, G. A.
Thomson, George (Dundee, E.)


Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Park, Trevor (Derbyshire, S. E.)
Thornton, Ernest


McBride, Neil
Parker, John
Tinn, James


McCann, J.
Parkin, B. T.
Tomney, Frank


MacColl, James
Pavitt, Laurence
Tuck, Raphael


MacDermot, Niall
Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd)
Urwin, T. W.


McGuire, Michael
Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred
Varley, Eric G.


McInnes, James
Pentland, Norman
Wainwright, Edwin


McKay, Mrs. Margaret
Perry, Ernest G.
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen)
Popplewell, Ernest
Wallace, George


Mackie, John (Enfield, E.)
Prentice, R. E.
Warbey, William


McLeavy, Frank
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)
Watkins, Tudor


MacMillan, Malcolm
Probert, Arthur
Weitzman, David


MacPherson, Malcolm
Pursey, Cmdr. Harry
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


Mahon, Peter (Preston, S.)
Randall, Harry
White, Mrs. Ei[...]


Mahon, Simon (Bootle)
Redhead, Edward
Whitlock, William


Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)
Rees, Merlyn
Wigg, Rt. Hn. George


Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)
Reynolds, G. W.
Wilkins, W. A.


Manuel, Archie
Rhodes, Geoffrey
Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Mapp, Charles
Richard, Ivor
Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)


Marsh, Richard
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)
Williams, Mrs. Shirley (Hitchin)


Mason, Roy
Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)
Williams, W. T. (Warrington)


Maxwell, Robert
Robertson, John (Paisley)
Willis, George (Edinburgh, E.)


Mayhew, Christopher
Robinson, Rt. Hn. K. (St.Pancras, N.)
Wilson, Rt. Hn. Harold (Huyton)


Mellish, Robert
Rodgers, William (Stockton)
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)


Mendelson, J. J.
Rose, Paul B.
Winterbottom, R. E.


Mikardo, Ian
Ross, Rt. Hn. William
Woodburn, Rt. Hn. A.


Millan, Bruce
Rowland, Christopher
Woof, Robert


Miller, Dr. M. S.
Sheldon, Robert
Wyatt, Woodrow


Milne, Edward (Blyth)
Shore, Peter (Stepney)
Yates, Victor (Ladywood)


Molloy, William
Short, Rt. Hn. E. (N'c'tle-on-Tyne,C.)
Zilliacus, K.


Monslow, Walter
Silkin, John (Deptford)



Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)
Silkin, S. C. (Camberwell, Dulwich)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Morris, Charles (Openshaw)
Silverman, Julius (Aston)
Mr. George Rogers and


Morris, John (Aberavon)
Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)
Mr. Ifor Davies.

Orders of the Day — ARMED FORCES (HOUSING LOANS) BILL

Considered in Committee.

[Sir SAMUEL STOREY in the Chair]

Orders of the Day — Clause 1.—(EXTENSION OF PERIOD AND INCREASE IN AGGREGATE OF HOUSING LOANS.)

7.40 p.m.

Dame Joan Vickers: I beg to move, in page 2, line 1, to leave out subsection (2).

The Deputy-Chairman: I think that it will be convenient for the Committee to discuss, at the same time, the Amendment to the Schedule, in page 3, line 13, leave out subsection (c).

Dame Joan Vickers: That will be convenient, Sir Samuel.
I should like to pay tribute to the hon. Lady the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science who I am sorry cannot be here today. As was stated in an evening paper today, she has thrown herself into her job with an enthusiasm which has impressed the stolid Ministry. In the previous debate the hon. Lady took a great deal of interest in the subject. I am fortified somewhat today in the knowledge that the new Parliamentary Secretary asked some very pertinent questions about this matter when he sat on this side of the Committee. Further, it is interesting to note that the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Public Building and Works said:
… anyone who thinks that we intend to unscramble the scrambled eggs should think again."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 10th February, 1965; Vol. 706, c. 502–3.]
That was a disappointing remark, coming from the right hon. Gentleman, because it seems that the Socialists on so many occasions merely follow what the Conservatives started. I have always understood that they wished to be independent and put their own views into practice. I thought that the right hon. Gentleman, when he was on these benches, was particularly independent in the line he usually took.
I should have thought that in his Ministry he already has sufficient to do

in the care of Government public buildings at home and overseas—he has embassies to deal with, High Commission offices in the various countries to look after, co-ordination and research in regard to buildings, the building programme itself, ancient monuments and the giving of grants to historic buildings.
All these things are far removed from the matter we are discussing today, which is the practical, everyday need of housing for the Armed Forces. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman would be only too delighted to allow these activities in his Ministry to be handed over to the Ministry of Defence. I say that because the Ministry of Defence is now a really co-ordinated body. The three Services come under the same roof, and I should have thought that it would have been easier for the Ministry of Defence to handle the housing problems of the forces than the Ministry of Public Building and Works. After all, the Ministry of Defence knows the needs of the forces and the types of buildings required. It would be interesting to know why the right hon. Gentleman considers that his Ministry can undertake this work.
When the right hon. Gentleman discussed this aspect of housing in the recent debate we were told, for example, that officers were to have four-bedroomed houses while the other ranks would have three-bedroomed ones. I should have thought that experience of the Services' needs showed that it is the other ranks which need the four-bedroomed houses because the families in that group have younger children. Officers' children are probably older, have grown up and left home. It is the officers who need the smaller houses. In any case, I believe that to build houses or flats of three bedrooms these days is a far too costly business.
Nothing was said in the right hon. Gentleman's reply about the people discribed in the Bill as those
… employed in connection with, the armed forces …
This is an important subject from my point of view, because we must consider the dockyard personnel. At present, officers in the dockyard are invariably provided with accommodation, but up to a short time ago there was some accommodation for dockyard people


returning from overseas. However, this accommodation has been done away with in the Plymouth area.
7.45 p.m.
It seems odd that when a dockyard man and his family go overseas, to Malta, Gibraltar, Singapore or other parts of the world, perhaps only temporarily, they receive accommodation. However, when they return to this country it appears that everybody wipes their hands of responsibility for their welfare. This causes considerable hardship, because the housing situation in most of the naval ports is difficult. These areas are in demand by the civilian population and, for this reason, I should have thought that it was most important to let people who go overseas know—remembering that they do an extremely valuable job in overseas dockyards—that they will receive accommodation when they return home. If they do not have this assurance it will be more and more difficult to persuade people to take jobs overseas. It is interesting to note that the right hon. Gentleman said:
… the Ministry of Defence, my Department and the Treasury … look three years ahead."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 10th February 1965; Vol. 706, c. 503.]
Can we be told how it is possible to plan estates in such a short time? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the planning of estates is a lengthy business? First, the land must be obtained, the layout must be arranged, all the architects' work done and the houses constructed.
In this connection, I hope that we will have some better designs from the right hon. Gentleman's Ministry than we have had in the past. That work having been done, the accommodation must be furnished, the gardens seen to and so on. As things stand, it would appear that we have only three years in which all this work must be done and I fear that the programme will not be fulfilled and houses erected in that time.
How much co-operation is there between the right hon. Gentleman's Department and the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, as well as with the local authorities concerned in the areas where houses are to be built? In the last debate we were told that there

was consultation with the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, but the right hon. Gentleman did not mention consultation with the local authorities concerned.
We now have a number of Departments concerned with this type of housing. I presume that we begin with the Ministry of Defence, in which there are three separate Departments—for the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force, each stating its requirements—the requests from which go to the Minister, who must make his plans and layout. He, presumably, then consults his right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government who, in turn, consults the local authorities concerned—at least, I hope he does—in the areas in which houses are to be built.
What concerns me very much is whether these houses will be built in areas decided upon by the Ministry or in the areas where the Services want them. One of the difficulties now is that when sailors return to this country from overseas they must often travel long distances to find suitable accommodation. This causes considerable disruption. It is one reason for the bad re-engagement rate, because I have seen letters in my local Press stating how, for example, sailors arriving back in Portsmouth have had to live in Plymouth, while those arriving home in Plymouth have had to take accommodation in Portsmouth. Being shuffled back and forth in this way does not help our re-engagement efforts, let alone the sailors and their families. I hope that the Minister will find out from the various Service Departments where they desire houses to be built.
In the last debate we were told the number of houses to be built, but not the districts in which they are to be built. Some difficulty arises here and I will give one example. I gather that Raglan Barracks, in my constituency, now comes under the Ministry of Public Building and Works. There is some land there, and although the Royal Navy has been longing to have that piece of land—because it would complete a housing unit in the area—it is to be given to the local authority for housing purposes. There seems to be a complete lack of co-operation in certain respects and I should like to know whether it was the Ministry of Public Building and Works which decided


that the land should be given to the local authority. It is a very great disappointment to the Services locally that they have not got this land.
We learned on Second Reading that over the next few years £10 million, £12½ million, £16 million and £18 million is to be spent. I do not see from the figures how the houses are to be built, because costs are rising all the time. If a house which is to be built in the period in which £10 million is to be spent, costs more than has been allowed for, could some money be taken from the next allocation so as to finish a certain estate? We do not want estates to be half planned and half finished because there is not sufficient money. I mention this point because it has happened previously in regard to other Service buildings. My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Sharples), when he was at the Ministry, kindly came down to my area to straighten out difficulties such as this. All the work was held up because it was not time for the next allocation of money. If it had not been for my hon. Friend's kind intervention, we should have been left with the buildings half finished.
I hope that the Minister will consider the Amendment sympathetically, in order perhaps to give himself a little less work—I am sure that we should all like to have a little less work—and also because I personally think that my proposal would be far more satisfactory. I know that it is difficult to change things once a decision has been made, but this has been going on for only 14 or 15 months and is not too settled in his Department.
I am glad to see the new Parliamentary Secretary in his place. I started my speech by congratulating him on his new appointment and saying that I remembered that when he was in Opposition he asked some quite pertinent Parliamentary Questions about the changeover. Perhaps he will be sympathetic to my case today. Perhaps he will have some influence on his right hon. Friend. I foresee that with so many Ministries charged with this there will be a time lag. I suggest that the right hon. Gentleman, with all his manifold responsibilities in much grander work, would be wise to get rid of this small section of his work and give it to people who are in direct contact with their own

needs. This would be a far more satisfactory procedure.

Mr. Simon Wingfield Digby: I congratulate the new Parliamentary Secretary, who has not had very long to study this question. I, too, remember the Questions he asked in the last Parliament. I thought that they were well-informed. I certainly welcome him to his new Department, but it is not on account of the fact that he has come there that I raise this issue.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) that the Department has plenty enough to do without this. I believe that there is a strong case for looking at the matter again. The works services were removed from the Service Departments and given to the Ministry of Works, now the Ministry of Public Building and Works, before this great plan for the integration of the defence services had got very far. Now that it has gone a good deal further, I believe that the time has come to reconsider the matter.
During the last day or two we have had the Statement on the Defence Estimates, 1965, paragraph 41 of which shows what claims are made for the integration of the Services and their support into a single building. At this stage it should be remembered that even the Ministry of Aviation has been put under the same single roof, presumably because it is believed that there should be co-ordination under one roof for all the requirements of the Services.
Paragraph 41 begins in this way:
The reorganisation of the Defence Departments into a unified Ministry of Defence has been carried through successfully. Responsibility for the main aspects of defence policy, namely plans and operations, the defence programme and budget and the research and development programme, is now concentrated within the new Department.
Paragraph 42 says this:
Unified control of policy and management has made it possible to consider new initiatives for the rationalisation of Services' administration both in the Ministry of Defence and in the field. The aim is the most efficient organisation for the support of the Services in peace and war in the most economical way.
I do not think any of us would quarrel with that.
… Any changes in the pattern of the support organisation must take full account


of the differences in the need and circumstances or the Services.
All this makes one wonder, if it is true that the Ministry of Aviation and the three Service Ministries must be in one building so that there can be centralised control, whether it is any longer wise to keep the works responsibilities outside it. It must be an extra anxiety for the Minister and his officials. He must be having a build-up at this moment in staff in new areas.
When I was at the Admiralty, in certain cases of outlying Admiralty establishments we used the Ministry of Works as agents to acquire certain buildings. We did not find this an altogether happy arrangement, with an extra Department to work through. I do not want to cast any aspersions on the Ministry of Public Building and Works, but I do say that we did not find it a very satisfactory arrangement, any more than we found having the control of the Admiralty building itself as a headquarters under the Ministry of Works to be a very satisfactory arrangement.
This is not a one-sided argument. I recognise that there is something to be said on either side. However, I believe that in this connection there are three limitations to the Ministry of Public Building and Works. First, it is a predominantly civilian organisation without any Service slant, and it would be very difficult to make a new departure and give it a Service slant. Secondly, I do not believe that there is an analogy between most of the work which the Ministry does and the work of the Service Departments. There is no real analogy between building Government offices and building barracks, or between building embassies and building airfields, or between caring for historic buildings and caring for dockyard shops, which are immense things, or jetties in a dockyard. There are limitations to the work that can be performed.
The passage I read from the White Paper talked about the organisation of defence "in peace and war". Though we very much hope that there will not be another war, we must not overlook the fact that there might be one, even if it is a small one. This is what the defence services are for. I do not believe that the Ministry of Public Building and

Works organisation, with its ramification of officials over the country and over the world, would be as adaptable to war as Departments which came under the Services.
I am not advocating a return to three separate Works Departments for the Services. I am advocating a unified service Works department which, in effect, would probably have very much the same personnel as have already been transferred to the Ministry. It would have its headquarters at the same place as the three Services and the Ministry of Aviation.
I must concede at once that there are, or certainly should be, advantages for the Ministry of Public Building and Works over the same work done under the auspices of the Service organisations. I believe that the Ministry of Public Building and Works is very much better off for architects. I believe that it has some good architects. These were lacking in the Service Ministries. I know that there has always been a lot of worry about the design of married quarters in particular and, to a lesser extent, of other things.
There was a practice—for instance, when the new buildings were erected at Dartmouth—to call in an outside architect. So the Service Departments would remain free to call in outside architects. However, I imagine that the Ministry of Public Building and Works has an advantage in the design field.
8.0 p.m.
The Ministry of Public Building and Works is a large-scale enterprise. It is doing things in a big way throughout the country and, presumably, can get uniform designs and long runs even for barrack buildings, although Service practice differs considerably. I recognise that this is an important factor, the Ministry is used to dealing with big contractors, although I do not suggest that the service Departments have not had experience of this. The Ministry, however, must have had a great deal more. It is, of course, difficult to get the right sites, whether in Devonport, Portsmouth, or the London area. But I understand that under present arrangements the sites are obtained by the Lands Department of the Ministry of Defence and, therefore, two operations, one by that Department


and the other by the right hon. Gentleman's Ministry are involved, instead of one.
I do not know how far direct labour is being employed. I should be grateful for information on this point. I know that it was the practice of the Service Departments, in their day, to employ direct labour and that was costed against contractors' work with no very satisfactory result in the long run. It may be, however, that the Ministry of Public Building and Works has the practice of direct labour better taped than the Service Departments have had it in the past.
It is suggested that there is an advantage in that Ministry in the matter of design. Have we got down to a really good design for married quarters in each of the categories for senior officers, junior officers, and ratings? This has always been difficult. It must not be one design. Some of these married quarters are built in blocks of up to 1,000, and I can imagine nothing more horrible than 500 or more houses all exactly alike. I can understand why many people would not wish to live in them. I should like to know what progress has been made in designing married quarters. I did not like many of those I saw put up for the Admiralty. I cannot help feeling that, sooner or later, this work will go back to the Ministry of Defence, but in the meantime there is a danger that there will be a certain amount of duplication and a lack of co-ordination. The Ministry of Public Building and Works has a tremendous job to do in other respects and in that sense it would not miss this work if it were transferred elsewhere.

Sir Eric Errington: I should like to congratulate the Parliamentary Secretary on his appointment. I believe that he had a great deal of interest, as I had, in the collapse of one of our buildings in Aldershot. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will consider that one of his tasks in the future is to make sure that that kind of thing does not happen again. I should also like to thank the Minister for an interesting and helpful letter which I have received in connection with matters which I raised on Second Reading.
I am unhappy that the building of married quarters is not proceeding alongside the erection of other buildings, such as barracks and messes. I see that according to the Defence White Paper four unit barracks will be completed. The building of these barracks has been going ahead fairly quickly and I cannot see why the building of married quarters cannot proceed at the same time. I am informed, and no doubt I shall be corrected if I am wrong, that the barracks are up to time as a result of using industrialised building methods, which means that by the use of concrete blocks these buildings can be erected very quickly.
The argument in the Amendment is that this is not the case with married quarters. I have aesthetic ideas and I confess that neither the barracks nor the married quarters which are being built fulfil them, but if the barracks are being erected I see no reason why the married quarters should not be built at the same time by the same contractors using the same methods. I understand that the programme of building married quarters is behindhand. I do not know what the cost situation is—

The Deputy-Chairman: Order. The hon. Gentleman should relate this to the Amendment before us.

Sir E. Errington: I am relating it, in that my view is that this building is not being done in the most economical way as a result of the fact that the Ministry of Public Building and Works is dealing with the matter. If that is not in order, no doubt I shall be told.
I am disturbed about what my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) has said about the rate at which the married quarters are being built. Unless a considerable drive is put into this work by the Ministry, someone else ought to build them. Why are they so much behindhand when the barracks are more or less up to date? The two should go together. I would imagine that there would be a substantial saving on costs if that were done. Industrialised building is not beautiful, but it is speedy, and it is speed that is wanted. As my hon. Friend has said, great difficulties are being experienced over re-engagement because houses are not available for Service men.
It means that someone coming back to this country from abroad has nowhere to go. We must have the houses, and it is not unreasonable to say that if the Ministry of Public Building and Works cannot produce the houses at the same time as it is producing the barracks it is falling down on the job.

Mr. Anthony Kershaw: I agree that the Ministry of Public Building and Works is, under the reorganisation, better adapted to carry out the plans for building for the Forces than, perhaps, it has been in the past. Certainly, from the point of view of economy and special organisation, one supposes that a central organisation, as the Ministry is, would be better able to meet the needs of the Services in many ways. There is, however, one point which I hope that the right hon. Gentleman and his successors will always keep in mind.
It was raised in the first place by my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, West (Mr. Wingfield Digby), when he asked whether the Ministry was fully adapted to its dual purpose in time of war abroad. In the home country, whatever the conditions, it is the best organisation we have, but my mind goes back to what happened overseas during the last war.
The Administrations of territories organised by us were overrun by the enemy, for example, in Burma, and they were not organised for a period of conflict. The headquarters which the generals were trying to use was, in effect, a miniature war office, and it is almost too laughable to imagine the War Office going to war. It is impossible for an organisation geared entirely to peacetime work to transform itself, at a moment's notice, into the type of organisation which can effectively take over control during a period of crisis and, perhaps, invasion during war.
Any system which has at its heart an instantaneous change on the outbreak of hostilities must be a weak one. One must have one's organisation as one may want to use it at the worst time and make sure that it is running smoothly. If the plans depend upon a sudden change in the type of organisation at a moment of crisis, then it is

right to question whether this is the best organisation for the purpose.

The Minister of Public Building and Works (Mr. Charles Pannell): It seems to me that most of the fire from hon. Gentlemen opposite should be directed against their own Front Bench. This is something I inherited. I am not trying to make a party point about it. As we talk about these things in this context, I remind hon. Members that the Ministry of Public Building and Works is a technocratic Ministry. It is the fact that, about two years ago, all sorts of people all over the world, in the Army, the Royal Air Force and the Navy, people who had served in their Service for a long time, woke up and found that they were employees of this Ministry.
There was a sudden Cabinet decision. I have done a great deal of research in the Library to find out how it came about. I have never fully understood it, and I have not bothered very much about it since, but there were a lot of ragged ends as a result of what was a sudden decision. The merger received a good deal of quite rough treatment in the Estimates Committee, as anyone who has read its proceedings knows.
Feeling at that time was so high that all sorts of people in the Service Departments approached me and my hon. Friend, in our "shadow" capacity, with their discontents. I myself received a great deal of formidable evidence at the time, so I can assure hon. Members that I know what the case is.

Sir E. Errington: We realise that there were unsatisfactory aspects of the change. We do not need to be told that. We want to know what the right hon. Gentleman proposes to do about it now.

8.15 p.m.

Mr. Pannell: The hon. Gentleman made his speech in his own way. He is not a mealy-mouthed sort of Member, and I do not resent that, but he might allow me to make my speech in my own way. I was not replying to him; I was replying to his hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, West (Mr. Wingfield Digby), who had spoken about the merger.
I know that the hon. Gentleman is against the merger. He has a Question down to the Prime Minister about it. Within the narrow compass of the


debate on this Amendment, I cannot answer a general question about whether it would be better, as I have put it before, to unscramble scrambled eggs. The merger is a fact. It was accepted by the previous Government. I have tried to impress upon everyone concerned that, after all this time, it would be better that we settled down to try to make the best of it.
The effect of the Amendment would be to continue the present position whereby the loan money is issued to three Ministry of Defence Votes, one for each of the three Services. I do not think that I should answer a lot of questions about this because it does not strictly come within the ambit of the Amendment, and we had a fairly full Second Reading debate. The money is then passed over to three Votes of the Ministry of Public Building and Works, where it again figures as receipts against the cost of the work.
The intention behind the Amendment may be to offer an opportunity to discuss whether this Ministry should continue to be responsible for building for the Services in so far as discussion of it would be in order. This is what it is all about. With great deference to you, Sir Samuel, I thought that you showed latitude in allowing a good deal of the remarks which were made, but it is not necessarily up to me to take on the responsibility of replying outside the bounds of the debate.
Perhaps I may say that, had we known that the Ministry of Defence would become an integrated Ministry as it is now, and had I been looking at the question at the time, as a Minister, I might very well have come down in favour of a Ministry of Defence Works Department. But this is no longer open. I have inherited something else. I do not want to say anything about relationships between different Departments, and there does not seem to be any possibility of alteration now. We have gone beyond that. A lot of money has been spent and there has been a great deal of reorganisation. If I may say so, there has been a great deal of good British compromise and British common sense.
The hon. Lady the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan

Vickers), as champion of the Navy, is not really in a very good position to speak about this because the Navy seems rather to like the Ministry of Public Building and Works more than it did the old Navy Works Department. She may have spoken to people who were disadvantaged under the merger—I have had a great many such people come to me—but I think that, generally speaking, the Navy rather likes the broad idea of what is now being done for it. The hon. Lady will appreciate that, since I have held my present office, there has not been a week-end when I have not gone to some region covered by my Ministry to try to see people on the spot.
I think that I must leave the reply to the hon. Member for Dorset, West as one to come from the Prime Minister. It may be, however, that the intention behind the Amendment is simply to ensure that the situation is left open and that any possibility of transfer is not frustrated by the terms of the Bill. It is true that we could carry on as we are now, with the money payable to Ministry of Defence Votes whence it would come to us as appropriations in aid, that is to say receipts, on our Votes. But this is a cumbersome procedure.
Moreover, under the Bill as drafted, we could receive the loan money on a single Ministry of Public Building and Works Vote. This would have the advantage that funds, with Treasury agreement, could be switched from one Service to another in the course of a year if, for example, a particular programme were going more slowly and another more quickly than expected. Such flexibility is not possible under the present arrangements. Bearing in mind the present set-up, we consider it preferable that our needs should be met by putting the loan provision on a Vote of the spending Department.
Moreover, if there was a case of change of responsibility, a technical matter of this sort would be no bar. The same sort of problem was solved at the time of the merger and could be solved in reverse. How it was done would depend on what else had to be done. If a transfer of functions order was necessary, that could be the vehicle. However, it seems unnecessary to discuss details of what might be done in a


hypothetical situation which is not likely to arise.
If the Amendment were carried, the Report stage of the Bill would have to be deferred, since consequential Amendments would be needed. We should have to delete, in Part I of the Schedule, paragraph 1(c) and 1(d) and it would also be necessary to make consequential Amendments to Part II.
I would like now to turn to one or two points which were not perhaps strictly within order, but which were put by hon. Members seeking information. I have already pointed out to the hon. Member for Dorset, West that it would not be right to take the whole business of the merger within the ambit of this Bill. We do not employ direct labour on building married quarters. We employ direct labour on some new work for the Navy Department, and on maintenance generally, about on the same scale as before the merger.
The hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir E. Errington) raised the question whether we are behind schedule in building new married quarters in the Aldershot area, where traditional methods are being used. Because of the general labour shortage, we shall, in future, build a large proportion of married quarters in the area by industrialised methods. The quarters now being built there were designed a few years ago.

Sir E. Errington: The right hon. Gentleman said that the Ministry was behindhand because of the shortage of labour. Is there a distinction between the labour used for barracks and the labour used for married quarters?

Mr. Pannell: The distinction the hon. Gentleman wants is surely the distinction between the labour employed on traditional methods and the labour employed on industrialised methods. There, of course, there is a distinction. In industrialised building, there is a far higher proportion of unskilled and semiskilled men. It requires a different sort of labour force.

Sir E. Errington: I was under the impression that labour used for the barracks was available. I was inquiring whether it was the sort of labour that could be used for married quarters. It seems to me that, in some way or another, the two things should be worked together

even if it means building industrialised married quarters.

Mr. Pannell: I can only assume that I did not make myself clear. The point is that the married quarters being built now were designed a few years ago and are, therefore, traditional. More quarters using industrialised building methods are being designed now—part of the building process is design. I was trying to point out that a different form of labour and a different content of labour is required for industrialised building.
The hon. Lady the Member for Devonport asked about what happens to married quarters eventually. We have a liaison with the Ministry of Housing and Local Government to ensure that the location and standard of married quarters makes them suitable for local authority purposes. They can go to local authorities afterwards. There is plenty of consultation in this respect. We build houses where the Defence Department asks us to do so. We do not put them up of our own volition. The Defence Department owns the land on which the houses are built. There has been no difficulty in disposing of surplus houses, but there have been very few.
I was asked about married quarters for persons employed in connection with the Armed forces. About 400 quarters have been allocated to civilian employees, such as firemen and key maintenance staff, whose duties make it essential for them to be housed on the spot. The allocation of quarters is a matter for the Defence Department.

Mr. Wingfield Digby: The right hon. Gentleman mentioned progress in design of married quarters and I should be grateful if he would tell us more.

Mr. Pannell: It is going on all the time. I am quite prepared to write to to the hon. Gentleman on that point. However, for now, I dealt with it partly when I referred to the building at Aldershot and explained that the married quarters being built there were designed some years ago.

Sir E. Errington: Does the right hon. Gentleman expect to overtake the lag in the building of married quarters during the coming year?

Mr. Pannell: Yes. I believe that there will be a considerable break-through in building this year, and I have always expressed the view that Service men should be included in the top priority.

Mr. Kershaw: Would the right hon. Gentleman deal with the problem of whether his Ministry is fully geared to operating under extraordinary conditions, especially abroad? What system of liaison is there? Are there plans for handing over to a military commander of a theatre or something of that kind? Is there any organisation between the Defence Department and the Ministry to cope with that sort of situation?

8.30 p.m.

Mr. Richard Sharples: I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) realises that we would not be able to support her. She and I have discussed this matter very often in the past.
I was a little disappointed by the explanation given by the Minister for maintaining the status quo. He will know quite well that one of the main considerations uppermost in the minds of those who made the change was not so much the question of building for the Services, but how the whole programme of building for the Services in the United Kingdom could be co-ordinated with the construction which was going on in other projects inside the United Kingdom. That was the main purpose. The right hon. Gentleman gave the impression that if the Ministry of Defence had been in being when his Ministry took over responsibility, it might equally well have gone the other way.

Mr. Pannell: What I was saying was that if it had been known that the Ministry of Defence was to come into being as an integrated Ministry, we could have considered whether it would have been better to have had a Ministry of Defence Works Department. That is still the view held in certain quarters. I did not go into detail about this, because I thought that this was not a suitable opportunity, but if there is to be a full-scale debate on the subject, I could willingly deploy all the arguments. I do not think that there is anything between us on this issue.

Mr. Sharples: I am glad to hear that and I am very reassured by what the right hon. Gentleman has said.
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will take the opportunity to refute a story which is going about. It is that there is to be a change in the basis upon which construction for the Services is done. It is now done as an allied service and not as an agency. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will be able to assure us that there is no question of a change, so that the Ministry will be able, through the direct contracts which it places, to ensure that modern methods are used and will be able to supervise the contracts all the way through and, what is much more important, be able to see that building for the Services is co-ordinated into the remaining building programme of the United Kingdom.

Mr. Pannell: I have heard the same sort of story although people tend to approach the Opposition about these things. This idea has come up from time to time. I can give the categorical assurance that I have heard nothing of this from the Minister of Defence. The hon. Gentleman will remember that I was recently in some trouble with one of the trade unions and that I tried to say that this matter would not be settled by any trade union agitation and that, if it had to be settled, it would be a political decision. Of course, I understand that there is still a hangover of people who had positions in the old three Service Departments and who probably still yearn for the days of yesteryear. That is probably how the story has arisen. I have given the answer.

Amendment negatived.

Mr. James Ramsden: I beg to move, in page 2, line 14, to leave out subsection (4).
The Amendment is being moved to elicit an explanation which we failed to get from the Government on Second Reading. The Bill makes a change in wording which has stood in previous Statutes. In the parent Act, the Armed Forces (Housing Loans) Act, 1949, dealing with the method of the repayment of these loans, Section 1(3) says:
the aggregate of the sums so issued in any financial year shall be repaid into the Exchequer, as mentioned in the next following paragraph, with interest thereon at the appropriate rate …


That rate is defined at the end of the subsection as:
the rate of interest applicable to a loan made, immediately before the end of that year"—
that is, the financial year—
out of the Local Loans Fund …
In other words, the appropriate rate is defined with reference to the local loans rate. The Government now propose that it should be such as the Treasury may determine. My hon. Friends and I are interested in getting an explanation for the change.
When we asked the question during the Second Reading debate, we were given two, if not three, different and, to some extent, contradictory explanations, The Minister of Public Building and Works said in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Sharples):
We borrow money from the Treasury at the same rate as that at which it gets it. That is what we mean by the most favourable rates within the Act.
Previously, in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Kershaw), the right hon. Gentleman had said:
The phraseology in this Bill with regard to the rate of interest is just the same as the phraseology in all the Measures of the previous Administration."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 10th February, 1965; Vol. 706, c. 488, 507.]
These two explanations leave room for doubt about the real purpose of the subsection.
We had hoped to have an explanation from the Minister of Public Building and Works. It looks as though we may get one from the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, from which direction the right hon. Gentleman has called up reinforcements. I applaud his wisdom in so doing. This is the kind of deceptively simple-looking point which, as I found to my cost when standing at that Box, is extremely difficult to explain unless one is a party to the law of the Treasury. We look forward to hearing the Financial Secretary's explanation as to why it has been necessary to make this change. I hope that he will be able to allay some suspicions which, perhaps unworthily, have formed in my layman's mind.
Bearing in mind some of the pronouncements on the subject of interest rates made by the Government, it

occurred to me that one effect of the amendment to the previous Statute might be that if hon. Members opposite had it in mind to vary the local loans rate downwards in the interest, perhaps, of producing cheaper houses, they wished through the amendment to prevent the rate of repayment for Service loans from being varied downwards and to maintain it as a special rate determined by the Treasury. The effect would be that houses for Service men would be subsidising cheaper houses for the rest of the population.
I hope that this is in unworthy suspicion on my part and that the explanation will turn out to be a great deal simpler. Perhaps the Financial Secretary could tell us what is the local loans rate—I have not the information and it would be of interest to the Committee—and indicate what, if any, differences there are likely to be between the local loans fund rate and the rate for the repayment of these loans as it may be fixed in future by the Treasury.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Niall MacDermot): These Amendments have taught me the early lesson that it is not always wise for the Financial Secretary to the Treasury to take a Ways and Means Resolution "on the nod". I was ready with a little, rather boring, speech to explain, if necessary, to the House the reason for this change in the wording relating to the rate of interest at the time when I was asking the House for the Ways and Means Resolution. As, however, nobody seemed to want to hear my little speech, I modestly refrained from making it. The result of that was to provoke, not unnaturally, a number of questions on Second Reading.
Now to the Amendment. To put it shortly, the reason for the change to the present wording, that the rate
shall be such as the Treasury may determine
instead of "the appropriate rate" as defined in the 1949 Act, is that the definition in the 1949 Act is no longer appropriate.
Before seeking to explain the rather technical reasons for the change, I assure the House that it does not portend any change to less favourable rates. In recent years the rates under the Armed Forces (Housing Loans) Act have been based


on the rate at which local authorities have been borrowing on the market, the rate of interest being high at a time when the rates are high. The intention is that the rate in future shall be based on the rate at which the Government themselves can borrow. That was the answer quite correctly given by my right hon. Friend the Minister on Second Reading.
The reason for the change is as follows. At the time of the 1949 Act, the local authorities were the main borrowers from the Government. Therefore, it was natural to think in terms of fixing the rate under the Act in terms of the local loans rate: in other words, the Public Works Loan Board rate. Now, however, there are many borrowers from the Exchequer, including the nationalised industries, and they borrow at rates which are determined by the Treasury. It seems sensible, therefore, that the Armed Forces (Housing Loans) Act rates should be on the same basis.
An additional reason is that there are now two Public Works Loan Board rates. Until 1955, the rate on loans made by the Board was based upon the Exchequer lending rate, but from 1955 until 1st April last the Public Works Loan Board was acting only as a lender of last resort to local authorities; otherwise the local authorities were borrowing on the market. Since 1st April last, however, there have been two types of loans, namely, the quota loans, which are at a lower rate, and the last resort loans, which are at the market rate. As our intention now is to lend at the Exchequer rate, there is no point in seeking to tie the formula to the Public Works Loan Board rate.
The formula which is now used—that the rate
shall be such as the Treasury may determine"—
is, in effect, the same formula as has been used in a number of recent Acts passed by the previous Government. The first of two examples is the Covent Garden Market Act, in which the wording is slightly different because it is done through the Minister responsible under the Act. It states that the interest
shall be paid … at such rates and at such times as he may with the approval of the Treasury, direct".
The right hon. Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden) will realise that that

means that, in effect, the rate is determined by the Treasury. Under Section 20 of the Transport Act, 1962, there is a similar formula with regard to advances made by the Minister of Transport to various boards.
8.45 p.m.
The right hon. Gentleman asked what were the present rates for local loans. As a result of the increase in the Bank Rate, the higher rate for a 60-year loan is 6⅞ per cent., and the quota rate is 6 per cent. The answers which were given by my right hon. Friend, both of which I confess on the face of it might appear to be a contradiction, were correct, namely, that the proposal under the Bill is that his Ministry shall borrow money from the Treasury at the same rate as that at which the Exchequer gets it, and when my right hon. Friend says that the phraseology used is the same as that in Measures introduced by the previous Administration, he is not referring to previous Armed Forces (Housing Loan) Acts, but these various other Acts which have this formula, and which is common form.
The hon. Gentleman asked more general questions about the review of local authority housing finance which is being conducted by the Minister of Housing and Local Government. The Minister has said that he will consider housing loans in the context of that review, but I think it is only right to point out to the Committee that different considerations apply here, when we are dealing purely with a loan within the framework of the central Government, by the Treasury to a central Department, from those which apply when one is dealing with loans to a local authority.
The rents at which houses will be made available to the Armed Forces—they will be for renting; there is no question of their being sold—will not be influenced in any direct sense by any variations which there may be under this Act if the House passes the Bill. I think that that answers the right hon. Gentleman's questions.

Mr. Wingfield Digby: I am sure that the Committee is grateful for the hon. and learned Gentleman's explanation, but I am afraid that the position is not entirely clear to me. He spoke about the rate at which the Government can borrow,


but I did not hear him say what that rate was at the moment.
We know that the P.W.L.B. rate for local authorities for special uses, and up to a limit, has been kept down, and the rest of it has been raised; but during the Second Reading, debate I made the point that about £90 million had been spent under these Acts, and that almost exactly the same amount was still outstanding from the unfortunate Service Departments. It cannot be said that after a lapse of some years the Treasury has had a bad deal out of this. The Treasury has done very well. I believe that the proceeds of this go for the reduction of the National Debt, so it is perhaps a good thing, but I do not think that we can accuse the Treasury of being very generous in this respect, and I would therefore like to hear what is the present rate of Government borrowing, as it is the same as that which they will be passing on through the Ministry of Works to the Service Departments.

Mr. MacDermot: I said that there were two rates for local authorities. The lower rate, which is the quota rate, is 6 per cent., and the higher rate, which follows the rate on the market, is 6⅞ per cent.

Mr. William Clark: I am obliged to the Financial Secretary for what he said, but I was rather hoping that the Minister of Public Building and Works would reply to the debate in view of his remarks during the Second Reading debate. I should like to press the Financial Secretary on a few more points.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden) pointed out that in the previous Acts of 1949 and 1953, and, in fact, of 1958, the term "the appropriate rate" was used, and the appropriate rate is based on the local loan rate. The Bill says that the Treasury "may determine" the rate. One thing that worries me is how the Treasury is to determine this.
The Prime Minister said at Stevenage on 16th September, 1964:
We shall cheapen the cost of housing by our interest rate policy",
and at Swansea on 25th January, 1964, he said that if we had to
use short-term rates to staunch any flow of short-term capital so as to safeguard our

sterling area reserves … we should take special care by the use of the two-tier interest-rate structure we have proposed to ensure that local authorities get capital for housing, at rates which represent the power of the Government to borrow.
This is what worries me. If the Treasury is going to determine the rate, how can we be certain that it will determine it at the present rate of 6⅞ per cent.?
I press the Financial Secretary for an answer on this point because at the moment we are enjoying, or suffering from, a Bank Rate of 7 per cent. I do not want to get out of order, but it is fair to say that that Bank Rate has been brought about by the action of the present Government in having painted too black a picture of the economy. If we are talking about interest rates we must remember that a two-tier system would be extremely damaging to our economy if it were to be extended. The Financial Secretary says that the borrowing rate is 6⅞ per cent. I would not mind it, but the interest rate does not look as if it will come down in the immediate future. The London County Council has recently borrowed £50 million and is paying at a rate of 6¾ per cent. Irrespective of what happens to the Bank Rate the London County Council will repay at 6¾ per cent. for the next 50 years.
What has been the appropriate rate in the previous Measures mentioned by the hon. and learned Gentleman? In 1949 the local loans rate was 3 per cent. In 1953, under the Conservative Government, the rate went up to 4 per cent. In 1958 it was 6¼ per cent. These were the rates that the Treasury had to charge for housing under those Measures. Today it is 6⅞ per cent.
This Bill will cost the taxpayer many millions of pounds. I accept the integrity of the Financial Secretary when he says that the Treasury will borrow at this rate, and lend, under the Bill, at the same rate, but there is nothing in the Bill which says so. If that is the Government's intention why not say so in the Bill? Why leave it to the Treasury to determine? Let us suppose that we have a two-tier system of interest rates and that the Government borrow at 6⅞ per cent. and lend to the Army at, say, 5 per cent. Somebody must pay the difference of 1⅞ per cent. Who will pay? The unfortunate taxpayer.
I have the relevant figures for the same years in respect of the Army Acts. In 1949 the taxpayer was subsidising local authorities to the extent of £71 million. We could have a system under which a lower rate was imposed under the Bill, and that would cost the taxpayer even more money. As I have said, in 1949, when the Labour Government introduced the first Measure of the series, the cost of local authority subsidisation was £71 million. In 1953 it was £91 million; in 1958 it was £116 million, and in 1963 it was £137 million. Although the question of local authority borrowing does not necessarily come within the ambit of the Bill it is right to point out the danger of having subsidised rates which are not shown clearly in the Bill.
The Financial Secretary has said that the Treasury will borrow at this rate and lend at the same rate. That being the case, why not say so in the Bill? The Amendment is justified, in that it draws attention to this matter. Why should the Treasury determine the rate? Does not the Treasury control our economic destiny? You would probably rule me out of order, Sir Samuel, if I continued with that argument, for the next Amendment deals with it. But this is something which we must think about when we are considering this Amendment.
I am certain that the Committee, indeed the whole country, and hon. and right hon. Members opposite, will agree that a sound economy must be based on the true cost of money. If we borrow money and propose to do something with it, we can lend only at the same rate at which we borrowed. If the money is lent at a lower rate someone would have to pay the difference, and unfortunately that someone would be the taxpayer. I accept the explanation of the Financial Secretary of the remarks made by the Minister, but I think that the Minister should look again at what he said during the Second Reading debate in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Kershaw). He said that the phraseology in the Bill was exactly the same as before.
With respect, so far as the appropriate rate in this Bill is concerned—I accept that the Financial Secretary spoke of transport legislation, but we are talking about housing for the Army—I think that the Minister might have withdrawn his remark. He said:

Therefore, this imputation merely betokens a degree of ignorance on the part of the hon. Gentleman, and hardly deserves an answer."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 10th February, 1965; Vol. 706, c. 488.]
I do not think this showed ignorance on the part of my hon. Friend, it is a perfectly valid point. The Financial Secretary admitted to the Committee, and the Minister said:
I do not think there is much in the last point. The hon. Gentleman is probably on a better point about interest rates."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 10th February, 1965; Vol. 706, c. 488.]
That was exactly the same point about which my hon. Friend had been accused of being in ignorance.
If the Treasury is to determine the rate and if the rate is to be that at which the Government borrow money, without there being any intention of having a subsidy, I wish to ask the Financial Secretary why that is not written into the Bill.

Mr. MacDermot: I found the least convincing part of the hon. Gentleman's contributions in his first sentence when he said that the Committee listens with pleasure to the Financial Secretary. It is a somewhat recherché pleasure which I do not think that many of his hon. Friends share with him but, whatever the pleasure, I am afraid that I have not succeeded in making the matter clear to the hon. Gentleman. There is still confusion in his mind.
He referred to the speech made at Swansea by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister about a two-tier fixed rate system. We have had a two-tier fixed rate system which was introduced by the last Administration in relation to local government—the quota rate and the last resort rate. We made clear that if it was necessary—the Prime Minister made it clear in his Swansea speech—to raise the Bank Rate in the kind of situation we have recently experienced, an effort would be made to protect local authorities by this system from the impact of that rate increase, and that was done. That is why the quota rate has been held at the figure which I gave the Committee, namely, 6 per cent. With a higher Bank Rate, at the moment the current borrowing rate of the Exchequer for a 60-year loan is 6½ per cent., so if the loan were made under present conditions, the prevailing rate would be


6½ per cent. There is no intention to subsidise loans in any way under this Bill.
The hon. Gentleman asked why that is not written into the Bill. The answer is that it is unnecessary to do so. This is a formula which is adopted, and which was adopted by the previous Administration, when the intention is to borrow at the Government's borrowing rate and fix rates basically at a rate of interest matching the Exchequer rate of borrowing.
9.0 p.m.
The hon. Gentleman made some provocative remarks about the increase in the Bank Rate. It is quite true that the Bank Rate was increased by this Government. It was increased because of the situation which we found on taking office. The usual criticism which has been made against us in relation to this is that we did not raise it earlier than we did. I do not know whether the hon. Member thinks we ought to have raised it later or not, but there is no doubt about the cause of it. Let us not argue about these matters. I hope that I have reassured the hon. Gentleman that there is no intention to subsidise. The formula does not involve any question of subsidy and this is the accepted formula for providing for loans which are to be borrowed at the Exchequer borrowing rate.

Sir E. Errington: Are we to understand from that that the rate to be charged in connection with these loans will be the same as the rate which will be charged to municipalities for their housing programmes?

Mr. MacDermot: Not necessarily, because, as I have explained, there are two rates for a local authority, the lower of which has been set at 6 per cent., so the local authorities are getting the benefit of loans at 6 per cent. in this temporary situation of the high Bank Rate, but, normally speaking, the lower rate is the Exchequer borrowing rate. At the moment that is artificially, or temporarily, raised to 6½ per cent. At this moment if a loan were to be made, it would be made at 6½ per cent. As soon as conditions allow the Bank Rate to be reduced, that rate would lower automatically as a result.

Amendment negatived.

Mr. Kershaw: I beg to move, in page 2, line 15, to leave out "Treasury" and to insert:
Department of Economic Affairs.
I do so in order to find out what is the intention of the Government after the creation of this new Ministry. There are, after all, two Ministries now in charge of our financial affairs and they are not equal Ministries; one is superior to the other. This is inherent in the organisation. Also, it is clear that a planning Ministry has certain built-in superiorities to an executive Ministry such as the Treasury. It is clear that the Department of Economic Affairs has and must have complete freedom and the overriding influence in determining what the rate of interest should be. Therefore, I put this Amendment down in order to find out why the superior Ministry has not been given the authority which one would expect it to have and why the old formula has been used.
Has it been used merely because it is the old formula, or is it for some reason which escapes me at the moment? It was the Treasury and not the Department of Economic Affairs which in the past took the important decisions about rate of interest. It would be unnecessary to expand that. The point is a short one and I should like some elucidation.
Depending on what the rate of interest is, the Financial Secretary said that there is no question of disposing of any of these houses. Of course, that is wrong and ought not to be accepted by the Committee. There is sometimes an occasion for disposing of them. They are sold. I have a letter which the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Public Building and Works kindly sent me, in which he says that occasionally they are sold. What effect will the rate of interest have on the price? How is the price to be calculated? Will it be based on a rate of interest, on the local value of houses, or the ability to pay?

The Deputy-Chairman: Order. I do not think that this arises on the Amendment.

Mr. Nigel Birch: I have returned to the House at great trouble and expense to speak on this Amendment because it has very considerable constitutional interest. The Chairman of Ways and Means, in his infinite wisdom, has


selected an Amendment which implies that there is more than one Minister responsible for interest rates in this country. My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Kershaw) said that the Department of Economic Affairs was the top dog. I do not know. It would be most interesting to hear the views of the Treasury Bench upon this. I understood that there was this great row and that they were all the same; they jugged down together and the fellow who had the loudest voice won.
But it is true to say that, as the Ministries are set up, with the actual personalities there, the back end of the pantomime horse is the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for Economic Affairs is the front end; and, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer is a very light weight indeed, he is being spun around all over the place. That is one reason why our financial affairs are in such a frightful mess.
I should like to hear a firm statement from the Treasury Bench that the Secretary of State for Economic Affairs has nothing whatever to do with interest rates and never will have—and I think that that arises on this Amendment.

Mr. MacDermot: I am delighted to notice the enthusiasm of the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Kershaw) for the formation of the new Department of Economic Affairs. So enthusiastic is he that he wants to transfer additional functions to it.
But I must advise the House that this Amendment should be resisted for the very simple reason that rates of interest on Government loans fall within the sphere of responsibility of the Treasury. I hope that that will reassure the right hon. Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch). We all listened to him with the greatest pleasure on this side of the Committee. Irrespective of whether we always appreciate his argument, his manner of speaking, even when he comes post haste and at great expense to the House, remains enjoyable to listen to.
But we remain the Department responsible for the management of the Consolidated Fund, and it is not the duty of the Department of Economic Affairs. For that reason, I must advise the Committee to resist the Amendment.

Amendment negatived.

Question proposed, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.

Mr. Ramsden: I take this opportunity to try to get from the Minister some answers to questions which I and my hon. Friends asked him on Second Reading and which he was not then able to answer to our satisfaction. The first question which he was asked and to which his answer was unsatisfactory, in my view and that of my hon. Friends, concerned the period of time provided in the Bill. Is the three-year extension of the loan long enough? I hope that he will elaborate today on what he said on Second Reading and either give us a more satisfactory answer or some indication of the Government's intention to alter this period.
We need to be given this reassurance because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Sharples) said on Second Reading, all the houses in the programme referred to by the then Parliamentary Secretary were already in the pipeline at the time of the change of Government. In passing, may I express regret at the translation of the hon. Lady the Parliamentary Secretary, while welcoming to his new post the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Boyden)?
I am interested in looking beyond that programme because we are not so much concerned with what may be achieved as a result of a programme determined by us when we were in office. We are satisfied that that was a good programme and that it should be within the scope of the right hon. Gentleman's Department to complete it. We are more concerned with looking beyond that programme and to finding out what the present Administration intend to do after 1966–67. It will be after this time that the present Government will be dealing with years not covered by the Bill. We want to ensure that a satisfactory rate of building of married quarters will be maintained.
To briefly recapitulate our case on this issue, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam said on Second Reading:
Taking the figures which were given by the right hon. Gentleman in reply to a Question, the programme of the previous Government provided for the completion of 3,750 houses in the present financial year; next


year the completions again under the programme provided by the previous Government, were to be 4,500; and the year after that 5,400. Yet in 1967–68, that is, the final year of the period covered by the Bill, and the first year when the present Government can have any influence upon the number of completions, there is to be a drop of 300 in those numbers."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 10th February, 1965; Vol. 706, c. 495.]
No answer was given and no contradiction was made from the Front Bench opposite of my hon. Friend's remarks.
I believe that at one point during the debate the right hon. Gentleman said that the precise determination of the figure was still under discussion. I hope that he will be able to give more information today, because he must appreciate our concern to ensure that an adequate rate of building is maintained. On the face of it there is the possibility of a slowing down in the programme.

Sir E. Errington: This is not so much a question of programme as a question of performance. In other words, we really want to know what the Government consider will be the number of buildings completed rather than the number of buildings in any programme.

Mr. Ramsden: I agree with my hon. Friend, but I understand that the figures I quoted represent the number of buildings the right hon. Gentleman expects to complete.
On the face of it, it is somewhat alarming to see that after the three years about which we have been speaking a drop is forecast for the following year in the number of completions. That is why we need some reassurances from the right hon. Gentleman. If I am wrong, and if there is not to be a drop—if the programme is to be maintained at not less than the rate which by then the right hon. Gentleman will have achieved—then the question arises whether the amount of money that he is providing under the programme. The sum of £45 million is provided for by way of loan in the Bill. In the year beginning 5th April, 1965, £16 million is due to be spent, and £18 million is due to be spent the year after, making £34 million in those years for the programme already announced by me last year and confirmed by the hon. Lady the Member for Cannock (Miss Jennie Lee). If in the following year the rate of building is to be no less, the right hon. Gentleman will need another £18

million. That totals £52 million, as against the £45 million provided in the Bill.
9.15 p.m.
This might be put in another way. Referring to the passage on Second Reading when the right hon. Gentleman talked about his success in having achieved a rolling programme over three years, one might say that it is difficult to see how the Bill can provide for a rolling programme three years ahead. I can see that were the proposal to be for a greater sum than the £45 million to be provided it might do so; but within the limits of the present sum I do not see how it can. I should welcome some further reassurance from the Government. Why does not the Bill propose to provide a greater sum of money and why does it not extend over a longer period?

Sir E. Errington: I point out to my right hon. Friend that paragraph 162 of the Statement on the Defence Estimates 1965 makes it extremely complicated and almost impossible to understand:
About 1,300 married quarters are expected to be completed in 1964–65 and in 1965–66 it is planned to start construction of a further 1,500.
So we are not comparing like with like. It does not matter whether one decides to give the figures of completion or the figures for the commencement of construction. They should be like figures, otherwise I do not see how the comparison can be justified.

Mr. Ramsden: I agree with my hon. Friend. I hope that in his reply the Minister will be able to elucidate this. I had noticed these figures on a quick first reading of the Defence White Paper. I confess that I was somewhat puzzled by them, but I did not introduce them into my argument for the purposes of what I am now saying because I was trying to keep the discussion on the basis of figures given in a Parliamentary answer, on which basis the discussion on Second Reading was conducted.
I want to talk about the true significance of this method of financing the building of married quarters. I asked the right hon. Gentleman about this on Second Reading. He gave this explanation:
This method of financing the programme has come to be well understood by the forces.


To adopt a different method might cause disquiet. The alternative method of financing out of Votes is equally acceptable now that we have established a procedure whereby the Ministry of Defence, my Department and the Treasury work jointly on a programme in which we always look three years ahead.
There is no reason why capital expenditure by the Government should be met by loan rather than out of revenue."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 10th February, 1965; Vol. 706, c. 503.]
I should like that explanation to be carried a little further in relation to some queries I have. There must be some advantage in the money for financing housing programme like this coming by way of loan rather than out of a Vote. I suggested on Second Reading that if the amount of money for a programme such as this is down in black and white in a Statute, when the time comes for discussions on the defence budget—discussions such as the right hon. Gentleman referred to on Second Reading between him and his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer about the size of the programme for, say, 1967–68—the right hon. Gentleman is in a stronger position to resist pressure to cut down on his own programme within the context of a possible reduction of the defence budget if he can point to the House of Commons having approved sums of money of this kind being available to him by way of loan. There must be some good reason, therefore, for the right hon. Gentleman advocating this method of financing.
I should have thought that it was a good thing that the hand of the Minister of Public Building and Works for the time being should be strengthened in this way. One does not have to be a crystal gazer to be clear that in future there will be pressure to cut down the amount of the national resources allocated for defence. Anything therefore that can isolate from such pressure the building of married quarters and similar objectives is to be welcomed.
As I tried to indicate on the last occasion when we debated these matters, such expenditure is not defence expenditure comparable with the provision of guns, tanks and aircraft and should not compete with it. This is real social expenditure, because if these families did not happen to be Service families they would have to be provided with accommodation

elsewhere by local authorities or through their own efforts. I am therefore all for the right hon. Gentleman's hand being strengthened by the Bill, but it does not seem to me that the Bill faces up to the question or meets the need.
The right hon. Gentleman said that this is a technical argument, but it is more than that. The Government, having proposed only a three-year term and a sum of money of only £45 million, are paying lip-service to the principle of loan financing by bringing in a Bill of some sort and at the same time dodging what is of real value to the Services in a Bill of this kind by so limiting that period of time and amount of money that the Services will derive little benefit from it. This time-scale and this sum of money is inadequate to the amount of building in prospect. The rest of the money will have to be found from Vote, and to that extent the Services will be denied the attraction of loan financing of which they have had the benefit under past Governments and past statutes.
The right hon. Gentleman was asked last time by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) and by me about hirings and how they would be affected by the Protection from Eviction Act. I thought that the right hon. Gentleman missed the point of our question, because he replied, quite rightly, that hirings in themselves have nothing to do with this Bill. But the point of our question, which is relevant to the figures, is this. Where the number of married quarters is inadequate to accommodate the Service families entitled, the position can be eased somewhat by approved hirings. Therefore, the availability of such hirings is relevant to the supply of married quarters.
Hirings can become available in or near garrison towns because other Service families make them available when they go overseas, on a tour of duty or for some other reason, and they make them available in these circumstances because they have hitherto always been confident of regaining possession for themselves on their return, with no question of another family remaining in illegal occupation.
Will the Protection from Eviction Act affect the position of the owner of a house which he makes available as a


Service hiring? Will it make it more difficult to get such a house back when he needs it for himself? If it will, owners will be less likely to make their houses available for hirings, and this will have an effect on the married quarters situation.

Mr. Wingfield Digby: I return to the question of the amount of money and the time limit of three years. I am glad to see the Deputy Secretary of State and Minister of Defence for the Army in his place. I only wish that a representative of the Treasury were here as well. Once again, no doubt at the behest of the Treasury, a patching job has been done in the Bill. As this form of financing is to go on, it would have been far better to have set it straight ahead for 10 years or so and not to have to come back to the House of Commons for an extension of time and an extension of loan in three years. This would have been better from the point of view of the Services, and I think that it would have been better from the Treasury's point of view if it had agreed to it.
I have no doubt that the Ministry of Defence put the point to the Treasury, but, once again, the Treasury has insisted on this kind of hand-to-mouth procedure, which results in the difficulty pointed out on Second Reading, that, as it is so hard to find time to fit this kind of Bill every three years into the legislative programme, towards the end of the period, when money is running out, anxiety is caused in the Service Departments. But I quite realise that nothing can be done about it at this late stage.
I asked a question earlier about design, and I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman will agree to put in the Library the designs for some of the new married quarters to be put up with the money we are voting so that we may look at them and see the kind of thing which is proposed.

The Deputy-Chairman: Order. There is nothing about designs in the Clause.

Mr. Digby: With respect, Sir Samuel, we are now talking about money which is to be spent over the next three years in designing the married quarters which are to be built.

The Deputy-Chairman: All we are deciding is the amount of money.

Mr. Digby: I thought that the amount of money would be sufficient to have designs of good quality.
The question of sites is, I am sure, in order because the money cannot be spent at all if there are not the sites on which to put the houses. This is quite an ambitious programme and it would be difficult to find sites near the centre of places like Devonport and Plymouth and some of the Army centres. This argument does not, perhaps, apply to the Royal Air Force to the same extent, because most airfields are in fairly isolated places. I should like some indication as to whether the land is available so that the programme we are talking about will not be held up. Obviously, it cannot be fulfilled if the land does not become available in time for building to start.
Secondly, I want to know what size these sites are to be.

9.30 p.m.

The Deputy-Chairman: Order. There is nothing about the size of sites in this Clause.

Mr. Digby: With respect, Sir Samuel, we are talking about the married quarters programme on this Clause, in which we are authorising expenditure of £45 million. Surely the design of married quarters is relevant.

The Deputy-Chairman: All we are discussing is whether the amount should be varied and the period extended.

Mr. Digby: On Second Reading, we were not told very much about how this programme is to be carried out and I hope that the Government, at some stage in our consideration of the Bill, by which we are voting £45 million of the taxpayers' money, will explain. We are entitled to know whether the land on which to build these quarters is to be available.

Sir E. Errington: I hope that I shall be in order. I shall endeavour to be. In the Statement on the Defence Estimates, 1965, emphasis is laid in paragraph 39 on the functional costing system now being studied. I wonder whether the building of these married quarters will be subjected to that. It seems from the Bill that three years ahead is about as far as is being considered. If that is the position I shall


have to limit myself to that period. I ask the Minister if he will clear this up, because the heading "Service Works Programme" in the Statement is quite obscure.

Mr. Pannell: We are not discussing that.

Sir E. Errington: It is part of the programme of married quarters and I want to know how many married quarters the right hon. Gentleman proposes to build with this money.

The Deputy-Chairman: Order. I do not think that that arises on this Clause.

Sir E. Errington: With great respect, Sir Samuel, one is entitled to ask what is to be done with the money that is being loaned.

The Deputy-Chairman: The only question in the Clause concerns whether we extend the period of the Bill for three years and the amount of the loan.

Sir E. Errington: Surely, if there is to be a period of three years under the Clause, one can ask what is to be done with the money during that period and still keep in order.

The Deputy-Chairman: I understood that the hon. Gentleman was discussing design and the plans on which these buildings are to be carried out.

Sir E. Errington: With respect, Sir Samuel, it is not a question of how the buildings are to be carried out, but of how many buildings are to be built. None may be built. That would be carrying it to a ridiculous extent, but it is clear that one can surely talk about the number proposed and ask the right hon. Gentleman to explain the programme, including commencement and completion. I do not understand your ruling against me on that.

The Deputy-Chairman: The hon. Gentleman can only advance arguments as to why this period should not be extended and the loan should not be increased.

Mr. Kershaw: The White Paper on Defence, which we have had in the last two days, contains a number of paragraphs setting out various methods by which costs in connection with the Services are to be controlled. It is astonish-

ing if we are to find that the right hon. Gentleman has no idea, or will not say, how many houses he is to build.

Mr. Pannell: On a point of order. It is not legitimate for the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Kershaw) to cast aspersions that I will not say something when I am sitting merely under the Ruling of the Chair. His complaints must be against you, Sir Samuel, and not me. I will try to reply to anything which you rule to be in order.

Mr. Kershaw: I was a little apprehensive about what information the right hon. Gentleman was about to give, because he has given a lot of information from a sitting position, not all of which I could hear. I understood that he intended not to say anything about the questions advanced by my hon. Friends. I hope that I am not doing the right hon. Gentleman a wrong and that he has the answers ready and that I am barking up the wrong tree.
The new Statement on Defence contains a great deal about the methods for the control of expenditure which are to be adopted in future. We would like to know to what extent this recent document has altered the right hon. Gentleman's thinking about the expenditure of the £45 million and how many married quarters he expects to be able to produce and how many he would have produced before he knew about the White Paper and how far he is to adopt the methods adumbrated in the White Paper and whether, having read the White Paper with the profit which, I hope, we have all gained from it, he expects to be able to build more with the £45 million and to what extent his thinking, if it is such, has been altered by the White Paper.
The right hon. Gentleman has had time to read it and we want to know to what extent these new methods of cost effectiveness are to be employed in his Ministry and to what extent they will provide more married quarters for the £45 million in the three years. The questions of my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir E. Errington) were pertinent to this issue and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman, with all his documents before him, will be able to give us the answers.

Mr. Pannell: The right hon. Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden) must not


forget that he was Secretary of State for War and must not assume that I do not know what went on in his Department when he was there. If he had still been there, I doubt whether we would have had any Bill of this kind, for the whole thing would have been financed, generally speaking, out of revenue. These things do not suddenly stop when there is a new Administration.

Mr. Wingfield Digby: On a point of order. Is it in order to say what would have happened if there had been another Government when you ruled me out of order when I spoke about married quarters, Sir Samuel?

Mr. Pannell: I am replying to an argument which is based on whether we should have a three-year or five-year period, or finance out of revenue. If I was not in order on that, there would be no point in my replying.

The Deputy-Chairman: The right hon. Gentleman is correct. He is replying to the arguments limited to the two issues of whether there should be a three-year programme and to what extent the loan should be increased.

Mr. Ramsden: Perhaps I can assist the right hon. Gentleman and make sure that he keeps in order. I do not mind his speculating about what might or might not have happened about the financing of married quarters if my right hon. Friends had remained in Government. He can speculate about that as much as he likes. He has chosen the loan financing method, as I think rightly and sensibly, to provide support for his future programme of married quarters. I accept that. The question which I would ask and which my hon. Friends have asked, and which we have not had answered is whether, having accepted this method, his provision for carrying out the programme is adequate both as to time and to money.

Mr. Pannell: This is almost tedious repetition. When a Member rises to ask a question, one is entitled to ask his bona fides for putting the question. We arc responsible for everything we say here. For instance, when the right hon. Gentleman poses this question it comes rather more significantly from him because he has been Secretary of State for War and has dealt with these con-

siderations. In so far as I give him credit for his interest in the Bill, I am fully entitled to criticise his motives for advancing, in opposition, arguments which he never advanced when he was a member of the Government. That is the short point which I am now making.
I do not think that if hon. Members opposite had been in power the Treasury would have decided to go on with this method. Whether the right hon. Gentleman would have prevailed, and brought in a Bill like this, I do not know. But he must not think that our standard has fallen because we have done better than he would have done if he had been on this side.

Mr. William Clark: rose—

Mr. Pannell: I have listened to a great deal this evening, and it is reasonable that—

Mr. Clark: On a point of order. Is is in order for the Minister to put forward an argument about what we on this side might have done had we been in power? Surely that is completely out of order on this Bill?

The Deputy-Chairman: It is not out of order.

Mr. Pannell: If the hon. Gentleman comes to a place like this, he should not be so thin-skinned. I do not intend to be mealy-mouthed. The right hon. Member for Harrogate put the academic argument to me as to how we should finance the building of married quarters. That is what I was dealing with. I do not think that we would have been troubled with a Bill like this had his party been sitting on this side of the Committee.
Let us assume that there was a great recession, or a general slump and a cutback in expenditure. I cannot see that it would matter which financial procedure was used. A cut could be made either way, because the money would still come out of estimates in the normal way. These sums have to be voted every year in any case, and I do not think that they are insulated. I know that the Service Departments believe that they are insulated by the Bill and I take responsibility for it here. I am putting the point forward in good faith. But could have put forward another view.


However, the right hon. Gentleman must be satisfied that we are bringing the matter forward in this way.
May I deal with one or two things which have arisen. I am advised that the question of Service tenancies and hiring is strictly out of order on this Clause. I only want to say, perhaps with the indulgence of the Chair, that all Departments tend to be over-generous rather than under-generous about letting people stay on. This is tied up with the—[Interruption.] If we are to have an involved argument, we will be out of order altogether. When I answered the right hon. Gentleman last time I thought that he was referring to Service tenancies and was saying that they would be more protected under the legislation of this Administration than before. However, he is now referring to hiring as between one Service man and another. Am I right?

Mr. Ramsden: The right hon. Gentleman is quite right. I am referring to hiring, but I am not referring to the point about people being able to stay on. This was the mistake which the right hon. Gentleman made last time. The point concerns the difficulty or otherwise for the returning owner of managing to recover possession of his own house from a tenant who may be using it as a hiring. What will be the position of that returning owner under the Protection from Eviction Act? If it will be more difficult than in the past, nobody will let his house and the right hon. Gentleman will have a shortage of hirings.

Mr. Pannell: If the right hon. Gentleman is dealing with another facet of the matter, he will have to direct his question to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government.
The prime matter about which the right hon. Gentleman asked was the three-year period. I have said what I have to say on this. The right hon. Gentleman has read HANSARD, but if he looks at the bottom of column 503 of the Second Reading debate he will see that I said:
What is important is that a firm decision should be taken to build more married quarters and that the forward programme should look beyond the next financial year. I can assure hon. Members that we will take this matter up within the three years, in plenty of time. In this and the next two years £47 million will be spent on building married

quarters in the United Kingdom, nearly double the amount spent in the preceding three years. These are the only figures that matter in this argument."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 10th February, 1965; Vol. 706, c. 503.]
9.45 p.m.
I gave a Written Answer to the right hon. Gentleman on this very point on 8th February, when he asked me
how many married quarters will be built for the three Services, respectively, in 1964–65, 1965–66, 1966–67, and 1967–68, in the United Kingdom."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th February, 1965; Vol. 706, c. 27.]
The whole lot is there set out, so that the right hon. Gentleman should not be short of knowledge on this point.

Mr. Ramsden: But is enough money being provided for by loan in the Bill to finance the building of all those married quarters?

Mr. Pannell: The answer is "Yes", as far as I know. I have said that it is nearly double the amount spent in the previous three years. If the right hon. Gentleman does not like my referring to his personal antecedents, at least I am entitled to refer to the vital statistics concerning housing.

Sir E. Errington: Will the Minister allow me to mention once again the question of married quarters completed or begun? The figures which are relevant to this differ entirely from what the right hon. Gentleman is saying. I refer to paragraphs 157 to 162.

Mr. Pannell: I should not be entitled to reply to that, or even to deal with an intervention of that sort. I thought that I had dealt with all the points that were raised and were in order. The amount of money that we are speaking of here is the amount provided under the Bill. I thought that the hon. Member was a little confused in his calculation which he added un to £52 million, which included other houses in Great Britain financed from ordinary Votes.
I have tried to answer all the relevant questions and I want to keep in order. This is a generous Bill. Its programme will be carried out over a period of three years instead of five years. It is a rolling programme. The right hon. Gentleman will, I hope, believe that I and my party are equally sensitive to giving priority to the serving man in providing him with the foundation of a


good home, whether in married quarters or elsewhere. There is no political business here. We have done the best we can as we see it. We think that we have been generous in our provision and I hope that we can leave it there.

Mr. Kershaw: This will not do. The Minister simply has not understood my Second Reading query, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden) has put at least twice again. What does the Minister propose to do about the Service man who is posted abroad—

Mr. Pannell: Excuse me, Sir Samuel, but that is the matter which you have ruled out of order.

Mr. Kershaw: —the Service man who goes abroad, who lets the house which he is occupying, which has been built for him by the Service, to somebody else during the period of his posting.

The Deputy-Chairman: Order. This does not arise on the Clause.

Mr. Kershaw: If it does not arise, Sir Samuel, it has not arisen at a very late stage in our proceedings, because my right hon. Friend has posed the question twice. The Minister answered it by saying that he had not the faintest idea and he asked us to ask the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. It is not good enough, at this late stage of the proceedings, for the Minister to seek protection behind the Chair.

The Deputy-Chairman: It was in order to discuss the effect of the programme laid down in the Clause, but it is not in order to discuss the matter in detail.

Mr. Kershaw: If it affects the programme, Sir Samuel, how can it not be in order? This is important in relation to the extra amount which becomes available under the Bill and to the flexibility of the housing. We know that other legislation is coming forward which may vitally affect the number of houses available. Unfortunately, postings are becoming increasingly—

Mr. Pannell: The hon. Member is still out of order.

Mr. Deputy-Chairman: Order. We cannot discuss postings in this way.

Dame Joan Vickers: This is an important and relevant point.

Mr. Pannell: It is still out of order.

Dame Joan Vickers: The Minister might wish that he had accepted my right hon. Friend's Amendment. Perhaps he would have preferred to get rid of the whole thing and to hand it over to the Ministry of Defence, since it is so complicated. Because of the Protection from Eviction Act, fewer hirings will be available. I have tabled a Question to the Minister of Housing and Local Government on this matter. What we really want to know—

The Deputy-Chairman: Order. The Protection from Eviction Act does not come into the discussion on this Clause.

Dame Joan Vickers: Less accommodation will be available. Will the right hon. Gentleman be able to increase the number of houses to make up for those which will not be available in future? This is the point about which we are worried. Will the programme be sufficiently flexible to make up for the houses which will not be available in the future?

Mr. Pannell: If the hon. Lady reads my winding-up remarks, she will see that the amount of money that we are giving here is nearly double the amount which has been spent in the last three years. I should have thought that that gave her a degree of flexibility. These are the only figures which matter in this argument, and the only figures which it is in order to give.

Sir E. Errington: There are three periods during which this programme of providing married quarters is to be carried out. Is it possible to be told, and am I in order in asking, how many houses will be built? [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."] It does not look as though I shall get an answer, so I leave it there.

Mr. Kershaw: We had an answer to this question during the Second Reading debate. The then Parliamentary Secretary, who has now been replaced by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Boyden), whom we all wish to congratulate, intervened in my speech and gave me the answer. If we could adjourn for a short time, perhaps it would be possible for the right hon. Gentleman to look through the debate, find his answer, and give it again.

Mr. Pannell: I have given the figures. They are in HANSARD, and the hon. Gentleman does not gain anything by being gratuitously offensive to me.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule agreed to.

Bill reported, without Amendment; to be read the Third time Tomorrow.

Orders of the Day — ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE BILL [Lords]

As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.

Orders of the Day — Clause 9.—(AMENDMENT OF SECTION 168 OF COUNTY COURTS ACT 1959, AND CONSEQUENTIAL AMENDMENT OF SECTION 172 THEREOF.)

9.53 p.m.

The Minister without Portfolio (Sir Eric Fletcher): I beg to move, in page 10, line 18, to leave out "deposit or short-term" and to insert
other than a long-term".
I think that it would be for the convenience of the House if the Amendments in page 10, line 39 and page 11, lines 1, 2 and 10 were discussed at the same time.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Samuel Storey): If the House wishes, so be it.

Sir Eric Fletcher: These Amendments are of a drafting nature. Those hon. Members who were present in the Standing Committee will remember that we made certain technical changes in Clause 9. These further Amendments were necessary because subsection (1,g) replaces the current provision in the County Courts Act enabling fund rules to be made governing dormant county court funds. Among other things, the rules may require the closing of any account included in a published list of such dormant funds, but as at present drafted this power does not extend to an account which is neither a deposit on short-term, nor a long-term investment account. It is obviously necessary that all such accounts should be

covered, and these Amendments remedy that defect in the Bill as at present drafted.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendments made: In page 10, line 39, leave out "a deposited or short-term" and insert:
an acount other than a long-term".

In page 11, line 1, leave out "a deposit" and insert "an".

In line 2, leave out from "Rules" to end of line 3 and insert:
(other than a long-term investment account)".
In line 10, leave out first "the" and insert "any".—[Sir E. Fletcher.]

Orders of the Day — Clause 19.—(CONTROL BY COURT, IN CERTAIN CASES, OF MONEY RECOVERED UNDER FATAL ACCIDENTS ACTS.)

Sir Eric Fletcher: I beg to move, in page 16, line 20, at the end to insert:
(2) Where money that has been recovered, or adjudged or ordered or agreed to be paid, as mentioned in subsection (1)(a) above, or has, after payment into court, been accepted as mentioned in subsection (1)(b) above, is in court at the commencement of this Act, then if it is not subject to be dealt with under that subsection and the person entitled thereto is not under disability it shall be paid out to that person upon an application's being made in that behalf to the court.
The hon. and learned Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) will recall that we had a discussion on this matter in Committee. I believe that it was the hon. and learned Member himself and my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) who raised the matter. They inquired what the position would be under the Bill as it stood in respect of the funds at present in court to which a childless widow was entitled. On both sides of the House we are concerned to ensure that once the Bill becomes law it will not only apply to funds paid into court thereafter but will also have the effect of enabling any childless widow who at present has funds standing to her credit in court to make application to the court for them to be released to her, free of control, and that she shall as of right be entitled to such an order.
In Committee I expressed the view that the Bill as it stood would have this effect, subject only to some amendment to the existing rules of the court. Since then I understand that some doubt has been expressed about that view, and


that it has been suggested that the court might hold that unless the matter is put beyond all possible doubt in the Statute it would be open to argument whether any alteration in the rules of the kind contemplated had the necessary vires. Since I do not want there to be any doubt about this I thought it better to suggest that the House should put the matter beyond all possible doubt. That is why I have moved the Amendment.

Mr. Ian Percival: My intervention is in no way hostile. On the contrary, it is merely to seek clarification. Hon. Members on this side of the House are obliged to the Minister for looking at this point which as he said was discussed during the Committee stage. I am sure that our objective is exactly the same as he said We are concerned to see that any childless widow should be able to get money out of court. I am sure that the Minister meant to say any childless widow who is herself over 21.
With this new subsection the general framework which we now have is that while subsection (1) applies to money recovered hereafter, subsection (2) refers specifically to money already in court. Within that framework there is a great many possible variations. As to two of the three main possibilities the position is quite clear. One is the widow who recovers for herself and is under 21; that is one of the main classes.

It being Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Ordered,
That the Proceedings on the Administration of Justice Bill [Lords] may be entered upon and proceeded with at this day's Sitting at any hour, though opposed.—[Mr. George Rogers.]

Question again proposed, That the proposed words be there inserted in the Bill.

Mr. Percival: I was dealing, albeit briefly, with the three main possible variations of a situation which could arise and which these provisions are intended to cover. I was referring, first, to the case of a widow who recovers for herself and is an infant, under 21. Whatever her age it is plain that she will be under supervision under Clause 19.
The second case is that of the widow who is herself over 21 and has no children under 21. That is equally clear. Whether the amount is recovered subsequently, or whether it is already in court, it is plain that she will be able to get it out. There is a third class and it is about this third class that I seek a little information. It is the case of a widow who, although she has no children under 21, is herself under 21 and therefore an infant. It seems plain that under the new subsection she will be under supervision—I use this word compendiously—until she is 21.
I take it that that is the reason for the words "is not under disability". I believe that the word "disability" is nowhere defined in any Statute. It is probably sufficiently well recognised in the courts that it will have the effect that the widow who is under 21 who has money in court will not be able to take out money under this new subsection. That applies only to cases where the money is in court already. I assume that it is intended that a similar provision shall apply to widows under 21 who recover in the future. I should like the Minister to confirm that it is intended to apply to both cases.
It appears to me that subsection (1) would not cover such a person. It may be that such a person is covered under other provisions and is dealt with as an infant rather than as a widow. I am sure that the Minister would agree that it is desirable there should be no doubt about this. If there were any doubt, one might have the anomalous position that whereas money already in court recoverable by a widow who is under 21 could not be paid out, money recovered in the future could. I should not like there to be an anomaly of that kind, and I seek an assurance that the Minister is satisfied that if subsection (1) clearly does not cover the case I am mentioning, it is covered under other provisions of the existing law.

Sir Eric Fletcher: I can give the hon. and learned Gentleman the assurance he seeks. The provisions of the Bill will not give rise to the anomaly to which he has referred. It is quite clear from the proposed new subsection that a widow who is herself under 21 and has funds in court will not be entitled to


ask for their release until she attains the age of 21, when she will have the same rights as any other widow. It is also quite clear that, as regards the future, any widow being herself an infant who becomes entitled to funds in court will, notwithstanding the provisions of the Bill, still be subject to the ordinary rules derived from the Judicature Act, and, being an infant, will be subject to the supervision and control of the court until she attains her majority.

Amendment agreed to.

Orders of the Day — Clause 20.—(CONTROL BY COURT, IN CERTAIN CASES, OF MONEY RECOVERED UNDER FATAL ACCIDENTS ACTS.)

Sir Eric Fletcher: I beg to move, in page 16, line 30, to leave out "two hundred and fifty" and to insert "three hundred".
Perhaps it would be for the convenience of the House if we considered, at the same time, the next Amendment, in line 36, to leave out "£250" and to insert "£300".

Mr. Speaker: If the House so pleases.

Sir Eric Fletcher: The Amendments give effect to an undertaking which I gave in the Standing Committee to my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, East (Mr. Mapp) and to my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mrs. Jeger) and others. They had Amendments down to this Clause and I undertook to consider whether the limit of £250 which was originally contemplated as the upper limit for making an administration order could not properly be increased.
I am happy to say that we have considered this matter and are now inviting the House to agree that the limit of jurisdiction in the county court for making an administration order should be £300 and not £250. May I, in commending the Amendment to the House, also remind hon. Members that there is provision in the Clause for this limit to be increased, if found desirable, by an Order in Council on a subsequent date.

Mr. Charles Mapp: Those of us who feel deeply about this subject will be indebted to the Minister for meeting my hon. Friends and myself

in this matter. I think that this view extends across the House. In Committee we considered that this amount of £250 which was fixed 60 or 70 years ago, had no been adjusted to our accounting in modern conditions.
Unhappily, there are many homes in which difficult conditions arise, involving debts and other tragic circumstances, and often the welfare worker has to face this problem of debts before he can get the family on the right road. The point was made in Committee that, by this method, moderate debt could be dealt with in the home and the family could be helped back to the right road. I am very pleased that the Minister has been so forthcoming, although I have to acknowledge that I should have preferred a higher figure. I recognise that there is a legal difficulty. I deplore it. I cannot understand the argument that debts arising in household circumstances cannot be expressed in legal language as something entirely different from commercial debts to which different criteria of judgment should apply.
But there it is—and I must tell the Minister and the House that some of our social service workers, not least the Citizens Advice Bureaux, family service units all over the country and child welfare officers all feel that this is a new instrument available to them. At an early stage they will be able to take advantage of this simplified machinery and start constructively on the work of trying to get families back on the right road. We are not only consolidating; we are recording an advance, and to that extent we are deeply appreciative of what has been done.

Mr. Leo Abse: All of us who have pressed this matter are bound to feel gratification at the fact that the Minister has met our request to some extent. At the same time, we must ask whether the amount being proposed by the Minister corresponds with the social realities of the situation. I do not think that it does. I believe that the great changes which are taking place in credit in the world compel us to look with some skepticism at the new amount which the Minister proposes.
Hon. Members know that there is a long history within this House of how to deal with debt. Not so long ago Members of Parliament sought to remain


Members of Parliament because this gave them an immunity from debt with which otherwise they would not have. When dealing with the administration order, which gives a moratorium to people with a multiplicity of debts, we may perhaps recall the days of the 18th century when many hon. Members clung to their membership of the House solely because it freed them completely from arrest which would have led them to prison.
That is relevant to the discussion, because we see that how we deal with the incubus of debt was a problem which was in existence then, affecting our predecessors; and when we read of one million judgment summonses coming before the courts today, we realise that it is a problem today on an even larger scale than in the 18th century.
I therefore ask whether this increase genuinely meets the present needs. The only explanation which has been given why the administration order will not reach £400 is that if it did, we might lay ourselves open to the possibility that each year 60 people more who were involved in commercial debt to the extent of £400 might be able to obtain the benefits which the administration order, under the proposed Amendment, would not give them.
I repeat what I said in Committee. If that is the only explanation, it is inadequate. We are offering those who are harassed by debt an opportunity of having their affairs reshaped and settled without the danger of being in prison and without the anxiety and stress which follow as a result of threats of bankruptcy. If, while extending this aid to the feckless groups, to the problem family groups and to the inadequate personalities, we also, by chance, extend it to 60 people who are involved in commercial debts, I do not believe that any great wrong will be done.
10.15 p.m.
Indeed, if traders are involved in debt to the extent of £400 they are usually corner shop traders—"muddlers"—and not people who are likely to set out deliberately to defraud the community. I do not think, therefore—although I have weighed well the arguments adduced by the Minister—that that is an adequate reason to resist the request that the

amount of this order should go up to the sum which is usually accorded to the county court, namely £400.
I ask my right hon. Friend to recognise how the whole credit system of this country is now being changed; how, as a consequence of the hire-purchase Acts we have passed, more and more extension is being given by the big hire-purchase companies to direct credit. They are continuing to grow although we have recently had legislation about hire-purchase agreements which we have caused to be tightened up. The result is that credit sales are proliferating and we have 1 million summonses a year for judgment debts. We can be sure that ere long there will be many many more.
I know that my right hon. Friend is mindful of the fact that each year 7,000 people are imprisoned for debt. Every day there are more than 200 people inside our prisons for debt. Whom are we really seeking to aid when considering an order of this kind? I suppose that the answer is that if we extend it to £400, instead of the proposed figure, that might be unfair to debtors, but who are the debtors we must consider?
If one says that they are the well-conducted businesses of people who give credit, I dispute that because we all know that the incidence of bad debts in a well-conducted credit business are extraordinarily small. When the National Council of Social Service arranged for a survey of hire purchase and credit buying it accepted a statement from the Retail Credit Federation to the effect that the yearly total of bad debts amounted to about ½ per cent, of sales. A representative of one of the larger finance houses gave a figure of less than 1 per cent. of sales to the National Council.
How does it come about that every year this huge number of summonses is issued? How does it come about that we have the problem, with which the Clause attempts to deal, of people who are being overwhelmed and crushed down because they are in debt? The answer is that we have a lot of scavengers at work in our community. The fact is that the large mail order businesses and hire-purchase companies, the large retail organisations and so on, do not generally go to the extent of pursuing people into court. They sell their debts to companies


which make a living out of other people's woe. They are selling them to companies which get a percentage of what they collect; companies which have a vested interest in squeezing debtors until, if necessary, they send them to prison.
When I am confronted with a Clause of this kind and I try to have some equity between those in trouble and those pressing them, I am bound to say that I have very little sympathy for those scavengers in our community who make a business out of other people's fecklessness and woe.
Anything I said in Committee is strengthened by the renewed representations I have since received, particularly from child care officers, who tell me—and I know that they would want their remarks stated in the House—that while I have stressed that 7,000 people go to prison, it is likely that, as a result of the National Assistance that has to be given to their families, it is costing the community £1 million a year to sustain the families of people in prison; that is, if we include the cost of maintaining debtors in prison. They say that we often forget the fact that time and again child care officers have to take children into care as a result of their mothers being put into prison.
The fact is that many of those whom we discuss on a Clause such as this are women who have been importuned into debt, often women who have been offered goods at the door and who are open to any representation which may be made. As a consequence, such women find themselves in extraordinary difficulties. When their debt is bought by these debt buyers and these women are pursued, if necessary, to prison, it is the children who suffer and it is the community which keeps those children in care.
Since there is a regulator here, and since there is the possibility within the Bill of the amount being increased, I seriously urge my right hon. Friend to reconsider the matter and raise the sum at the earliest possible moment. After all, today those who can get into debt are just the type of people, unfortunately, who can easily be persuaded to buy an overpriced secondhand car. Goodness knows, there are enough sharp people about in the secondhand car business. When they are about and can sell an

overpriced car to somebody, how easy it is for the total sum of debt to be above £250.
I do not understand whom we are attempting to defend. The Minister said that sometimes bankruptcy is preferable. It is for the debtor to make that choice. As our county courts squander their time as debt collectors and as judges of the county court spend one week in four dealing with judgment summonses, it is time the community said that it will not give encouragement to people who recklessly give credit of this character.
One hundred years ago Lord Jessel, the Master of the Rolls, said when the Debtors Act was introduced that he hoped that it would not be long before public opinion completely ended imprisonment for debt. Yet even now the Clause merely imposes a certain check upon it. I am aware that, as a result of the representations which some of us have made, and as a result of the open-mindedness of my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor and of my right hon. Friend the Minister without Portfolio, we are about to have a review of the whole question of the enforcement of debt. A step could be taken immediately by ensuring that an administration order should not be extended merely to £250 but should go as high as £400.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendment made: In page 16, line 36, leave out "£250" and insert "£300".—[Sir Eric Fletcher.]

Orders of the Day — Clause 31.—(POWER OF PARLIAMENT OF NORTHERN IRELAND TO ENACT PROVISIONS SIMILAR TO THOSE OF SECTION 19 OF THIS ACT. 1920 C. 67.)

Amendment made: In page 21, line 47, at end insert:
and if subsection (2) were omitted".—[Sir Eric Fletcher.]

10.24 p.m.

Sir Eric Fletcher: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
In view of the lateness of the hour, I am sure that the House will excuse me if I am very brief in commending the Bill for its Third Reading.
The House knows that the Bill has been very fully considered on Second Reading, in Committee and again this evening. I personally am grateful for


the various suggestions which have been made during the course of the Bill's passage, both by my hon. Friends and by hon. Members opposite, as a result of which very considerable Amendments of detail have been made and the Bill has been improved and perfected in certain respects.
As the House knows, the main object of the Bill is to provide modern and flexible methods whereby funds paid into court for the benefit of widows and dependants in respect of claims under the Fatal Accidents Act, can in future be invested far more prudently and sensibly than has been the case in the past. This, the primary object of the Bill, will I am sure put an end to a long-standing grievance under which widows and their dependants have suffered as a result of the courts having been compelled to confine their investments broadly to War Loan and other undated Government securities.
The Bill deals with a number of other matters. The one which has concerned most of the debate both in another place and here was the rather vexed question which transcended party politics, of whether the widow with dependent children should still be subject to the discretionary control of the courts. The Committee and the House decided by a small majority, as they did in another place, that on the whole the provisions of the Bill were to be preferred both to the recommendations of the Pearson Committee, which recommended more control, and also to the views of some of my hon. Friends who preferred the abandonment of all control. The House is to be congratulated upon having accepted a wise and sensible compromise.
My hon. Friend the Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) raised very wide questions of great social importance. I can assure him that the whole question, which he raised, of the steps which should be taken for recovery of debt is under the closest consideration by my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor and myself and I am hoping to make an announcement about that in the very near future. In the meantime, all we are concerned about in the Bill is the limit of debts in respect of which an administration order can be made. At present, the limit is £50, and so for many years past the administration order procedure,

which is a simplified form of bankruptcy, has been practically a dead letter.
We are now raising the limit from £50 to £300 and, as I can assure my hon. Friend and others, we shall be able to consider, now that it is raised to £300, whether that figure is right or not. It is not intended that the administration order procedure should be available for traders. It is intended that it should be available to that category of person to which my hon. Friend referred. Now that we have power to vary the figure by Order in Council, I can assure him that the appropriate figure will be reviewed from time to time.

10.29 p.m.

Mrs. Lena Jeger: I intervene briefly to put one point which I hope my hon. Friend will bear in mind. This is in many ways a technical Bill. There is nothing in the Title to suggest to the layman that it contains provisions which can have considerable impact on the alleviation of personal and family distress.
The usefulness of the Measure, which we all welcome, would be greatly increased if my right hon. Friend could find some way of ensuring that the fullest publicity is given to it, in possibly simpler terms than those in which for obvious reasons we have been considering it tonight, and made available on the widest possible basis not only to statutory authorities but also to people like the citizens' advice bureaux and other bodies which have been mentioned in the debate. It is essential that this wide and simple publicity be given to the benefits of the Bill. Otherwise, we shall find people whom we wish to help still continuing, through ignorance, to suffer from the wrongs we have tried to remedy.

10.30 p.m.

Mr. Percival: There may well be some hon. Members, perhaps on both sides, who have not yet been able to master fully or to comprehend the full significance of the apparently copious and sweeping reforms introduced by Schedule 2 of the Bill, for instance, the deletion of the words "with full costs of suit" from the House of Commons (Clergy Disqualification) Act, 1801, the deletion of the four words "with costs of suit" from the Nautical Almanack Act, 1828, or even the repeal of three whole Sections


of the Petty Bag Act, 1849. But it will be no surprise to the House to learn that we on this side welcome the Bill and we are glad that it has reached this advanced stage so speedily, and we gladly support it on Third Reading.
We welcome the Bill, of course, not for these minor amendments but because of its main provisions, to which the Minister has already referred, the provisions which make major improvements in the machinery for dealing with money paid into court. It will be no surprise that we take this view, because the Bill may fairly be said to have emanated from the work of the Committee presided over by Lord Pearson, as he now is, and set up by the last Administration to advise on this particular point. In substance, it is a Measure which would have been introduced early by whichever party became the Government.
We warmly welcomed the Bill on Second Reading, and I think we may fairly claim that it was we on this side who saved the Government from defeat in the one Division which took place during its passage thus far. However, I do not dwell on that aspect of it. The Minister has graciously acknowledged the way we have tried to be helpful. I in turn acknowledge the ready response from him to the suggestions which we have advanced from time to time, and the manner in which the points have been covered.
I stress only one aspect of the Bill now. It is important—this ties in with what was said by the hon. Lady the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Lena Jeger)—that the Bill be made effective. It provides some complicated machinery, and whether it is effective depends entirely on how the machinery is used. It is essential that that machinery be put into operation both speedily and effectively. We hope, therefore, that it will be possible to draw up schemes and put them into force quite soon.
But this is not all. Here again, I endorse what the hon. Lady said. The Bill is designed to have a twofold effect. First, we want it to improve the material prospects of litigants whose money is paid into court. Second, we want it to improve the confidence which they have in what is being done with the money

paid into court on their behalf. If we are to achieve those twin objectives, it is vital that the fullest possible details of the schemes, the investments which are made, the state of those investments, and the like, be given the widest possible publicity.
In Committee, the hon. Gentleman was good enough to give an unqualified assurance that this would be done and, of course, we accept that assurance and look forward to receiving this kind of detail as early as possible. Those who practise the law have also a heavy responsibility in connection with the Bill, because it is for them to advise litigants whose money is affected in this way what their position now is.

Notice taken that 40 Members were not present;

House counted, and, 40 Members present—

Mr. Percival: I was just referring to the responsibility which those who practise the law will have in advising litigants whose money is affected by the Bill as to their position, and in this connection I would mention again what I mentioned in Committee—the absolute necessity for the necessary amendments to the rules to be made at the earliest possible moment.
One other matter in the same serious vein is the question of redrafting the official form of order to be used in the county courts under the appropriate Section of the Act. We take the view that the Amendment to that Section 191 may well be of considerable help, but that will not be unless and until the official form of order used in the county courts for orders under the Section is altered, because we believe from experience that it is the form of the order which leads to the kind of difficulty to which the hon. Gentleman referred at an earlier stage.
We support the Bill because we hope and believe that it can result in a speedy, material and significant benefit to those who are affected by it, who, ex hypothesi, are people suffering hardship because they have recently suffered a loss. Whether that object is achieved or not will depend upon the manner in which these provisions are implemented. We appreciate that there are great difficulties to be resolved in implementation, but


we wish the Bill and those who have to implement it well, and we shall continue to take the closest interest in the manner in which it is implemented.

10.40 p.m.

Mr. Abse: I shall not detain the House long. I share the views expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Lena Jeger), because she wanted to emphasise that people should known the contents of the Bill. I do not want to go over the ground covered in Committee, which dealt with a very delicate subject as to whether a widow with children should have the right to bring her money out of court.
I hope that the small majority which that provision as it stands commanded will be noted outside the House. I hope, also, that the fact that the Bill gives discretion to the court to release the money will be noted by the judiciary, so that the discretion will not be exercised narrowly, because, as my hon. Friend the Minister without Portfolio has said, quite rightly, a distinguished opinion in another place held a contrary view to that now in the Bill. It was only through the intervention of the hon. and learned Member for Southport (Mr. Percival) and others that the view was finally taken in Committee that the money of a widow with children should be released to her and that she should not be discriminated against as a number of us now believe to be the case.
What is no less important is that every widow who is without children and who has money in court and who has the absolute right to take her money out of court should be so informed. I hope that steps will be taken to see that it should not be on the initiative of the widow necessarily to discover in some remote way that the money which she has in court can be taken out of court. If the House decides, as it is now deciding, that the money can be taken out

on request, the courts have a duty to see that widows are informed of their rights.

Sir Eric Fletcher: My hon. Friend says that a widow ought not to have to take the initiative, but he will appreciate that unless the widow applies to the court for the release of the money the court cannot act. I assure him that the fullest steps will be taken, largely, I hope, as a result of the debate, to acquaint all widows without children who have money in court that they have an absolute right to apply to the court for their money to be taken out.

Mr. Abse: I welcome my hon. Friend's comments, but I hope that it will go out from the House that there are large sums of money in court held by widows which, if they so wish, they can apply to have out. I take the point that it requires the widow to apply, but that does not mean that the court could not inform her that she has a right to make an application. I am sure that that view is generally shared in the House. It is not good enough that the money should be just left there.
Now that widows no longer have to go again and again to the registrar or master to cajole or beg for amounts, as has occurred in the past, and now that, belatedly, we regard women as men's equals, I hope that there will be no lingering misogynism in the courts and that they will not act churlishly and not inform widows of their overdue rights and not tell them that they need not be treated as idiots and infants.
Apart from that, I welcome what appears to be the conclusion of the Bill. It is clearly a Measure long overdue and it will have a considerable effect on many parties.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed, with Amendments.

Orders of the Day — OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT AND SERVICE [MONEY]

Resolution reported,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to amend the Colonial Development and Welfare Act 1959 and to authorise the Minister of Overseas Development to meet expenses incurred in connection with the employment of persons in overseas territories, it is expedient to authorise—

(a) the payment out of money provided by Parliament—

(i) of any increase in the sums so payable which is attributable to raising from £340 million to £390 million the limit on the sums so payable for the purposes of schemes within the meaning of the Colonial Development and Welfare Act

1959, or attributable to an extension of the period for which such schemes may continue in force, and
(ii) of any payments falling to be met under agreements with the Governments of overseas territories or other persons and relating to the employment of designated persons in, or in the public or social services of, overseas territories,

(b) any such increase in the sums which under the said Act of 1959 are authorised to be issued out of the Consolidated Fund, paid into the Exchequer or raised by borrowing as is attributable to raising from £105 million to £125 million the limit on the aggregate amount of loans under Section 2 of the said Act of 1959 or attributable to an extension of the time within which loans, or proposals for loans, may be made.

Resolution agreed to.

Orders of the Day — PLANT VARIETIES

10.43 p.m.

Mr. James Scott-Hopkins: I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Plant Breeders' Rights (Fees) Regulations 1965 (S.I., 1965, No. 66), dated 20th January, 1965, a copy of which was laid before this House on 1st February, be annulled.

Mr. Speaker: With this it may also be desirable for the convenience of the House to discuss the second Prayer—
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Plant Breeders' Rights Regulations 1965 (S.I., 1965, No. 65) dated 20th January, 1965, a copy of which was laid before this House on 1st February, be annulled.

Mr. Scott-Hopkins: Yes, it would be convenient, Mr. Speaker.
It is now almost a quarter to eleven and at the beginning of this truncated debate I must make a protest that we should have so little time to discuss these extremely important Regulations. Statutory Instrument No. 65 contains no fewer than 25 completely different Regulations and I would have hoped that we would have had longer than three quarters of an hour to probe the Government's intentions and purposes. The Government seem to be overloading the programme to an undesirable extent. Last night, for instance, we did not reach the Prayer which then appeared on the Order Paper. I must register once more the protest that we on this side regard this as a quite unsuitable arrangement when so little time is given to such important matters as we are discussing now.
As I have said, we are discussing 25 separate Regulations in this one Statutory Instrument, to say nothing of the others under Statutory Instrument 1965 No. 66, which specifies the various levels of fees. This is a complete departure from anything we have had previously. It flows directly from the Plant Varieties and Seeds Act, 1964, which was enacted by the previous Administration. These are the first Regulations arising from that Act and, therefore, particular scrutiny is needed to ensure that they are correct and operate fairly.
Under that Act, we are setting up a new office and giving to the Controller of Plant Variety Rights extensive powers. He is able to perform all kinds of functions and make important decisions which will affect a great many people and could affect them extremely harshly financially. The Regulations lay down how he shall carry out his duties, what those duties will be, how applications for rights and licences are to be dealt with and the rules governing them. It is, therefore, important that we get this right.
I welcome the fact that the Regulations have been made, but they are pointless unless there are schemes going with them under the Act. Without schemes in the pipeline, all the Regulations in the world will be of no advantage to growers of any varieties, whether of plants or of seeds. The first question which I hope the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will be able to answer is whether any schemes are about to be made and what they will embrace. I imagine that the first one would concern roses and that after that we will have schemes for cereals. I should like confirmation from the Parliamentary Secretary that the Controller intends to get on with these schemes as quickly as possible.
Again, the Regulations will not even what I might call get off the ground unless an index is compiled of the existing varieties, so that breeders can know not only the names of existing varieties which are so designated by the Controller, but also so that they may know what is included in the indices for any section or variety, so that they may make up their minds whether it is worth while submitting applications. These two matters are extremely relevant. Unless the Minister can tell us authoritatively that schemes are about to be made, the Regulations will be a complete waste of time and merely an academic exercise.
Having said that, I turn to the details of the Regulations. I will go through them as quickly as I can in the short time available to us as I know that many of my hon. Friends wish to speak and to raise points of their own. My first query concerns Regulation 2, which uses the phrase "any organisation". The word "organisation" occurs many times throughout the Regulations. What is meant by the word? What qualifies for description as an organisation? This


is the Interpretation Regulation, and I should have thought that it would have been proper for the phrase "any organisation" to be explained here. I find it difficult to understand what is meant by an organisation, and I should like the hon. Gentleman to explain that point.
Regulation 3 deals with applications for the grant of plant breeders' rights or protective directions. It lays down the form which these applications shall take, and a specimen application form is shown in the Schedule. I notice that an applicant need not put in the form laid down in the Schedule, but that he may put in any like form. It seems rather a waste of time to put in that provision.
Why is there no form in the Schedule for an application for a compulsory licence? This, too, is very important, and I should have thought that if the hon. Gentleman was going to the trouble of laying down a particular type of form for an application for plant breeders' rights, he would have considered it equally important to lay down a form for the application for a compulsory licence.
Regulation 3(3) refers to
Any person who satisfies the Controller that he has a substantial interest …
This is one of those controversial phrases, and I should like to know what is meant by "substantial interest". This is important in this respect, that it will allow, or will not allow, the person concerned to make representations to the Controller.
If the Controller decides that the person concerned does not have a substantial interest, he has no right of appeal to anybody else. He has no right of appeal to a tribunal if his application is turned down by the Controller. I should have thought that it was right and proper to write into the Regulations an appeal procedure similar to that which is provided in other Regulations.
Regulation 3(4) deals with priorities where two varieties are found at the same time. Will breeders' rights be granted to the first person who gets his application to the Controller? Will he be given a protective direction as well as plant breeders' rights? As I understand it, if two people discover the same species at the same time, the first person to get his application to the Controller on the authorised form will be granted the rights. Will he, during the interim period, be given the protective direction as well?
Perhaps I might pause for a moment to congratulate the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Loughlin) on his elevation to the Front Bench. We wish him well, and hope that his stay there is short. I expect that he has quite a lot to learn.
It appears from Regulation 3(4) that there is to be a 14-day time lag in which the application can be made, and that if the applicant does not apply within that time he can lose his right of priority. This may be all right for those who are based in the United Kingdom, but I wonder whether 14 days are enough for somebody overseas; somebody who may have to produce all sorts of material which the Controller may require before granting him the rights. It may well be that the applicant concerned is residing in some foreign country and is applying for rights in this country, as frequently happens. I am wondering whether 14 days would be enough in this context.
I turn now to Regulation 3(6) which states:
An appeal shall lie to the Tribunal against any decision of the Controller under paragraph (4) of this Regulation.
As far as any appeal is concerned against the question of priority, why is not an appeal allowed as far as paragraph (3) is concerned?
I turn to Regulation 5. This deals with the question of compulsory licences, where the plant breeder is not prepared to let someone else use the material. In that case the Controller has the right to grant a compulsory licence to the applicant for these compulsory powers to be applied to the use of this material. I think that as far as the applicant for a compulsory licence is concerned he is in a completely different position from the applicant for the breeding right. I should have thought that under the original Act of 1964 he should be on a parity with the applicant for the plant breeders' rights. This is a point which arises in the next Regulation as well.
A great deal of written evidence is required to be given to the Controller in all kinds of applications—for licences, revocations and changes. In each case application has to be made in writing. In another Regulation we find that when someone applies in writing he has to pay a fee. This seems a rather strange way of doing things. I should not have thought there was any need to make a change.
The Minister will see in paragraphs 8 and 9 of the Schedule to Statutory Instrument No. 66 that on delivery of the written material the applicant has to pay 10s. This really does seem rather stupid and unnecessary. Would it not be worth while washing that out? There is no point in irritating people unnecessarily. I should have thought it was bad enough having to do a great deal of writing without being charged for doing it.
I turn now to Regulation 7 (2). How is it going to work? How is the person herein mentioned going to satisfy the Controller? I should like the Minister to say how the paragraph is expected to work.
In Regulation 8 it is up to the Controller to
serve upon the holder of plant breeders' rights in a plant variety notice of any proposal to terminate
and so on.
I cannot understand why this Regulation is necessary, why the Controller should be required to do this. How is he expected to carry this out? Later in the Regulation the applicant is told how and where he is to apply to the Controller, but there is nothing in the Regulation which lays down how the Controller should go about the various jobs he has to do. Looking through the Regulations we see that in many cases the Controller has to get in touch with the applicants. He has to get in touch with interested parties. How is this to be done? Will it always have to be done by registered letter, or in what way will it be done? The difficulty may arise that the Controller has not sent any information to the breeder, who may say, "This fellow did not get in touch with me." A procedure should be laid down in these Regulations by which the Controller assimilates information and serves notice to applicants or interested parties. If such a procedure were laid down the situation would be quite clear.
I am confused a little by Regulation 9, which refers to a period of 28 days from the publication of a notice in accordance with Regulation 10. This publication will presumably have to be done by the Controller. Where, how and when does he publish? Nothing is laid down. Does this mean that this is done only when there is an appeal

pending, or when an appeal procedure is possible? Does it apply, for instance, in relation to Regulation 3 (3)?
Regulation 9 (4) brings us up against the difficulty of organisation. I do not see any point in this paragraph. It says:
The right of any such person or organisation as aforesaid to participate in any proceedings and of any organisation or person as aforesaid to make representations and be heard shall be conditional upon application to the Controller in accordance with paragraph (1) of this Regulation.
That seems superfluous. It is covered by the other Regulations.
Under Regulation 10, does the Controller publish in the Gazette only on a question which can go to appeal under paragraph (1), or when he has been given notice that it might go to appeal? Or does he have to publish in the Gazette whether or not the matter under discussion can go to the tribunal? As far as I can understand it, it seems that only when a matter can go to appeal is it necessary to publish.
Paragraph (2) contains the word "descriptions". This seems particularly vague. The Controller has to publish in the Gazette "descriptions of persons". How does he describe persons? Will he describe what a person does, or what his occupation is, or what is his previous history? What points will be brought out in this way? We want to be quite clear about this. When he has read these proceedings the Controller should have no doubt in his mind as to what he can include in any information which he publishes in the Gazette.
This Gazette will be a remarkably crowded document. It will have to contain a great many announcements of all kinds. It will have to refer to all the varieties laid down, and all the schemes. I shall be interested to hear from the Parliamentary Secretary how he envisages putting out this publicity not only in this country but overseas.
Regulation 11 seems to be of some importance for people overseas. It is quite possible that we shall have applications from people in France, the Commonwealth and elsewhere who will want plant breeders' rights in this country for certain varieties which they have managed to breed. They will have to deliver to the Controller, on his direction, details of the kind of materials for which they are


applying. I should like to know how the Parliamentary Secretary expects this to happen, and how much information should be supplied, for instance, about difficulties of transport.
As for the provisions of sub-paragraph (iii) of Regulation 11 (1), it is impossible for the Controller to have sufficient staff, who could be flying around the world examining breeder stations and farms and perhaps advising on different types of seeds and plants in faraway, distant countries. I wonder what staff the Parliamentary Secretary expects that the Controller will have, and whether he expects the Controller to use local staff. I would hope that the latter was the case. That is a point which will probably be raised later—that it would be excessively expensive, although it would be a splendid holiday for the Controller.
In Regulation 11 (2), we read that
The Controller may from time to time require a person …
to go through various tests. Surely the Parliamentary Secretary should be more precise than that in his Regulations. This may put an intolerable burden on someone who is trying to produce a new variety. What do the words "from time to time" mean? How many tests are there to be? Surely a particular period of time could be written into this Regulation, so that after two, three or four years, if the Controller were not satisfied with the results of the tests, the whole thing would be washed out. To leave the words as vague as this and not to put a time limit on it could put an intolerable burden on the breeder who is trying to secure his rights.
Regulation 12 is most important. This is the Regulation under which the Controller acts in a quasi-judicial capacity. As I said, this is a complete departure from anything which we have had before. Quite obviously, under this Regulation, the Controller would be unable to carry out all these duties himself. The Regulation says that after the Controller has refused an applicant for any of the various reasons, that person has the right to go to the Controller and appeal to him, and at the appeal proceedings the Controller acts in a quasi-judicial fashion, and the appellant is on oath. Quite obviously, the Controller cannot do all this. There is

provision for the Controller to appoint other people to act for him. I should like to know whose these people are to be. Will they be locally trained, or will they be from the hon. Gentleman's Ministry? Where will they be recruited? Will the hon. Gentleman have any say in this, or will it be left entirely to the discretion of the Controller? Excellent though the Controller may be, one would not necessarily be satisfied that he would be able to choose the right people to act for him in this quasi-judicial capacity.
This is extremely important, because under Regulation 12(12), witnesses may be required to give evidence on oath, and the question of perjury arises, in which the sole arbiter will be the person whom the Controller has appointed to act for him. This raises very big issues, but I do not think that I need to pursue them here. I think that I have made the points sufficiently clearly. It is extremely important that, under this Regulation, we should know what is involved and how it is intended to act. I am very glad to see that in 12(1) the condition has been brought in that there shall be appeal to the Controller. One could easily foresee that the entire tribunal procedure could become clogged up if there were not some intermediate machinery to ensure that every decision against an applicant is not immediately taken to the tribunal by that applicant.
Regulation 12(8) states that the Controller shall give to each of the persons concerned at least 14 days' notice of the time and place of the hearing. This seems superfluous in view of Regulations 12(6) and 12(7), and I wonder whether the hon. Member will explain why 12(8) is included. I presume that under 12(12), which provides for the administration of an oath, the penalties for perjury are those laid down by common law, and I assume that the Controller would be the person to indict an offender, if there were one—or possibly he would get guidance from the Director of Public Prosecutions. Will the hon. Member explain how this will be done?
There are many more Regulations. I do not want to take up the time of the House unnecessarily. I could go on for a long time, as I have only so far reached Regulation 12, and, as I said when I started, there are 25 Regulations.

Sir Douglas Glover: And there are 23 parts to the Schedule under the other Regulations.

Mr. Scott-Hopkins: That is true. We cannot possibly give these Regulations tonight the consideration which they ought to have. My hon. Friends wish to speak about them, and I could make many more points about them. I hope that the Government will bear in mind that these Regulations have not been fully discussed and will find time at a more suitable date for a discussion of the remaining Regulations.
Regulation 13(3) deals with the extension of the time during which plant breeders' rights are exercisable. How does the Parliamentary Secretary see this provision being carried out? It seems to me that if a plant breeder's rights are to expire on a given date and the appeal procedure has not been gone through, then a plant breeder's rights are nevertheless extinguished even though on appeal he might get a favourable decision from the tribunal. This would be a gross miscarriage of justice. There appears to be a gap between the time of the expiry of the rights and the time of the decision on appeal. I hope that the hon. Member will look into this.
I am being as quick as I can, but I must point out that Regulation 17 deals with the selection of names for plant varieties. Unless we have an index published before these Regulations are brought into force, the scheme as a whole will he useless. Are the Ministry or the Controller in the process of preparing an index? As the hon. Member knows from the Act—

Mr. John Farr: Schedule 5.

Mr. Scott-Hopkins: I am obliged to my hon. Friend.
In Section 20 of the Act, too, it is laid down that this shall be done. It can be introduced in sections—for example, for roses or for mushrooms or for whatever the Controller or the right hon. Gentleman decide is appropriate. Without the index the scheme is useless. I hope that we shall have an assurance from the hon. Member about this. I understand that a separate and distinct list is to he published under Regulation 17 as well as the index. Perhaps the hon. Member can clear up that point.
Regulation 17(8) says that if an applicant cannot find a name because the Controller has turned him down time and again, within 14 days the whole application falls to the ground. This seems hard. If the Controller has turned down the applicant three times, why should it not be an obligation on the Controller to find a name? I think that the Controller would be delighted to name a variety after his wife or daughter or god-daughter. Why should not the onus be put on the Controller after he has turned down the applicant's selection for a third time?
Another point is that if, as it stands under this paragraph, the Controller does turn down the things in Regulation 17(8), he cannot refuse to act in his quasi-judicial capacity; nor, it is important to remember, is there an appeal to the Tribunal. Those are points of which we should not lose sight.
Yet, on the whole, I welcome these Regulations. There is a great deal that the Parliamentary Secretary will have to explain in going through them. My right hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Sir Martin Redmayne) had a great deal to do with the introduction of this Act. He could not talk about it during its passage through this House, for reasons which we all know, but I am sure that, if he can catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, he would welcome the opportunity to say something about it this evening.
When my right hon. and hon. Friends formed the Government we had an extremely heavy programme in hand, but the difference between then and now is that, this evening, only three-quarters of on hour has been left for discussion of these Regulations. Many of my hon. Friends would wish to speak, but it is quite impossible for us to have a positive debate this evening. I hope that that fact will be noted and that, when we do reach 11.30 this evening and the debate has to conclude, we shall be given an assurance that we may continue at another time more convenient for hon. Members on this side.

Sir D. Glover: When the Act dealing with plant breeding went through this House it had my enthusiastic support; but tonight we have a Statutory Instrument dealing with this very complicated piece of legislation brought before


us for examination at 10.45 p.m. I object to this most strongly.
I am getting very tired of objecting to the scandalous way in which this Government treat the House of Commons. Here are two Statutory Instruments, Nos. 65 and 66. The former contains no fewer than 25 Regulations and a Schedule, while No. 66 contains four Regulations and a Schedule. This great democratic institution, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, now in power seems to think that three-quarters of an hour is sufficient time for a debate of any substance on those.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. John Mackie): The hon. Gentleman's hon. Friend the Member for Cornwall, North (Mr. Scott-Hopkins) made a very good point about this, but he spoke for nearly half an hour. If hon. Members would like some replies, the hon. Member should say no more.

Sir D. Glover: That is not the point. My hon. Friend spoke for about half an hour and made a most constructive speech. I do not complain and, in my view, he should have spoken for an hour on a subject of such importance as that before the House. In half an hour he could not possibly cover all the 29 Regulations and Schedules. He hardly had any time at all to refer to Statutory Instrument No. 66. All the time he was trying to make the very good point of how vital are these Regulations to those people affected.
Looking at the Statutory Instruments as they are published, I see that they come into operation on 22nd February; and if I know anything about calendars, today is the 25th February. Have they been operating for three days completely illegally? On what basis have the Government brought them into operation before they were debated and passed by Parliament? What right have the Government to say, "These Instruments will come into operation on 22nd February, but Parliament will not debate them until 25th February"?

Mr. John Mackie: rose—

Sir D. Glover: Too little time remains to enable me to give way. I know that the Joint Parliamentary Secretary is thinking that this is all very unfortunate

and that this business should not be raised because it is a procedural point, but evil starts in a small way and can grow into big issues. If this were one isolated case I probably would not be complaining, but the Government are repeatedly flouting the interests of the House.
There must be some procedural way by which these Statutory Instruments can be debated more fully than is possible in the time available to my hon. Friends tonight. If I had time I should like to examine each of the 25 Regulations and 23 Schedules. I am not trying to be funny, because I have a large constituency interest in plant breeders' rights. Indeed, in my constituency this is a great issue. Many agriculturists and firms in my constituency have written to me about a great number of points they would like me to raise in the debate, but since it is now 21 minutes past 11 o'clock, unless you can rule that more time may be provided for the Debate, Mr. Deputy-Speaker—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Dr. Horace King): Order. I think that the hon. Member will help to lose his case if he does not talk about the Instrument.

Sir D. Glover: With the greatest respect, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, I was making the point that I did not want to do that because if I did I would be reducing almost nil time to nothing. I want the opportunity—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Order. I hope that the hon. Member will now speak about the Instrument.

Sir D. Glover: I thank you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. You are always helpful to back benchers. I cannot think of any better person to occupy the Chair and keep we back benchers on the right rails. I will not say more, but give my hon. Friends an opportunity to make a similar protest because the Joint Parliamentary Secretary really cannot ask the House to pass these two Statutory Instruments on the basis of such a short debate. If that is his intention, I would be prepared to register my objection in the only way open to me.

11.24 p.m.

Mr. J. A. Stodart: I will, following the extraordinarily able


way in which my hon. Friend the Member for Cornwall, North (Mr. Scott-Hopkins) dealt with many of the matters involved, concentrate on only one aspect; but first I must say—although I say it with slightly mixed emotions—how much I deprecate the absence of a Scottish Minister, for I have some distinctly Scottish points to raise. I use the phrase "mixed emotions" because the Minister of State was of little help to us in a Committee elsewhere.
In Regulation 13, which deals with appeals to the tribunal, it is stated that the chairman of the tribunal will decide where the tribunal will meet to hear appeals. There is a reference in Schedule 4 of the Act to proceedings before the tribunal in Scotland. Can the hon. Gentleman tell me when and on what occasions the tribunal sits in Scotland? Does it depend upon the decision of the chairman of the tribunal who is appointed by the Lord Chancellor? Does it sit in Scotland whenever there is an appeal by a Scottish plant breeder or when a Scottish interest is involved? Could it be that if there were a collection of cases and there were one Scottish case and four English ones to be heard on the same day the Scots would have to come south? If that were the case I am certain that the hon. Gentleman would agree with me that it would be an outrage, because I am certain that he is as well aware as I am of the complete difference in the laws of evidence as between Scotland and England.
I do not suppose that the hon. Gentleman wants me to go into detail on the legal differences in the matter of evidence between Scottish and English courts. They might be slightly embarrassing to him. I take this substantial point seriously, as I hope he does. Where there is room in the provisions for the appointment of a Scottish chairman, on what occasions are Scottish cases to be heard in Scotland? It seems from Regulation 13 of Statutory Instrument No. 65 that the decision on where in the United Kingdom the tribunal is to meet is solely a matter for the chairman of the tribunal which is appointed by the Lord Chancellor. I hope, therefore, that the hon. Gentleman will address himself seriously to this point.

11.27 p.m.

Mr. John Farr: I cannot begin to say tonight what I should like to say on these two important sets of Regulations. My interest in this matter is not a fleeting one, because for a number of years now I have been tabling Questions at the instigation of a number of important plant breeders in my constituency to try to have put into operation the Act which the last Government got through the House. Tonight we have before us only the first two of many Statutory Instruments connected with the Act. They are both long and complex and I have a number of points to put to the Parliamentary Secretary.
Could he give the House some detail of the duties of the office of the Controller of Plant Variety Rights? Has the Controller been appointed? If he has, at what salary? As my hon. Friend the Member for Cornwall, North (Mr. Scott-Hopkins) so aptly asked, what sort of staff will he have? I assume from the Act and the Regulations that the Controller will have vast and comprehensive duties. What size of staff was originally envisaged, and was it considered that it would be likely to increase?
I raise this question not so much as one with a constituency interest in plant breeders as one who represents a farming constituency where farmers are very concerned lest this be another twist in the price spiral which has affected them ever since hon. and right hon. Members opposite came into office. We have had—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must talk about the Regulations.

Mr. Farr: Of course I will. I was trying to ask the Parliamentary Secretary whether the fees envisaged in the Regulations were not rather high and whether the registration fees will not be yet another inflationary demand in the ever-rising spiral of farm costs.

It being half-past Eleven o'clock, Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER, being of opinion that the time for debate had not been adequate, interrupted the Business, and the debate stood adjourned till Monday next, pursuant to Standing Order No. 100 (Statutory Instruments, etc. (procedure)).

Orders of the Day — INDUSTRY (PREVENTION OF ACCIDENTS)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Ifor Davies.]

11.30 p.m.

Mr. Donald Coleman: I crave the indulgence of the House on this the occasion of my maiden speech. I am deeply conscious of the inadequacy of my expression, which springs from a feeling of overwhelming nervousness, and for this I apologise to the House.
My constituency of Neath is in South Wales. It is a place where one finds many sharp and vivid contrasts. On the one hand, there are within its boundaries great industrial undertakings which make a vital contribution to the country's economy, for instance, coal mining, steel making, oil refining and light industry. Alongside this industrial activity, there is much scenic beauty in the valleys which comprise the constituency, a beauty which, over the past few years, has been greatly enhanced by the operations of the Forestry Commission.
It is also a place where one finds many reminders of our country's past history, for in the Borough of Neath itself there is much evidence showing that Neath was a place of considerable importance in Roman and Norman times, and, just outside, we have preserved for us as a result of the preservation work of the Ministry of Public Building and Works evidence that the area was a centre of considerable activity in the early Church in these islands.
The interest of the people of Neath in cultural matters is very marked. There are few constituencies which could claim that, operating and functioning regularly, there were six amateur operatic societies, a considerable number of choral and dramatic societies, and—I see that there are several of my Welsh colleagues present—considerable interest in the Eisteddfod.
I am proud to be the Parliamentary representative of such a constituency, which, for 19 years, has been represented by one who earned considerable respect both inside the House and outside for his quiet wisdom and his sincerity of purpose, a man who, we are all happy to see, is making a good recovery after

the unfortunate accident which he sustained in his home. I refer, of course, to Mr. David Williams.
Although I have spoken of the beauty, the historical associations and the cultural life of my constituency, it is to its industrial affairs that I wish to apply myself in the short time available to me, directing the attention of the House in particular to the problem of accident prevention in industry. This is a subject of great interest to the people of Neath who earn their livelihood in the industries there.
If an examination is made of the reports of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Factories and of the Ministry of Labour, one finds that an unsatisfactory comparison occurs between the time lost to industry through industrial disputes and that lost through industrial injuries. Unfortunately, strikes and lock-outs make the newspaper headlines, whereas accidents do not usually do so. I once heard a definition of an industrial accident as being an unexpected contact with interference with the work activity of a workman. Such interference is something which should not be tolerated in a modern industrial society, especially as most of these accidents can be avoided, as it is a waste of valuable productive effort.
My right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour is, I know, well aware of the continuing rise in the number of injuries sustained, and this is also the case with many industrial and trade union leaders who have a great concern with the problem, for they see that an industry which has a high incidence of accidents is not an efficient industry. The extent of the problem is often worse than that shown from sources from which we get the figures showing the accident rate, for these figures do not show the alarming increase in the incidence of minor injuries which are only minor because of the intervention of good fortune.
I have said that most of these accidents could be prevented and the wastage of productive effort avoided. This has been found by those industries, such as steel, coal mining, oil refining and others, which place the highest importance upon accident prevention and in which it is understood both by employer and employed alike. I am sure that, in these


industries, this consciousness of the need for accident prevention will show, with the passage of time, a considerable improvement in the safety performance.
However, it is among the smaller firms that one comes across failure to appreciate the full importance of efficient accident prevention and where there is a lack of conviction on the part of employer and employee that safe working is in everyone's interest. The factory regulations lay down that, where a firm employs 20 or more persons, a safety supervisor must be employed, but it is the experience of many of us who sit as magistrates and who have to listen to prosecutions brought by Her Majesty's Inspector of Factories against employers because some factory regulation or other has not been complied with, that the supervisor is usually a man who has other responsibilities and regards his responsibility for the safety performance of his men as not having quite the same degree of importance as some of his other duties. Because of this, he fails to inspire in his men a conviction of the importance to them, to their families and to the country, of adopting safe working procedure.
Accident prevention is a human problem. It is a question of getting the right attitude and motivation towards it. It is not a job which can really be left to someone to do as a part-time occupation and this, of course, has been recognised by some of our larger industrial concerns. Here I would like to pay particular tribute to the firm of which I was an employee before entering this House—the Steel Company of Wales, which has placed a very high importance upon the need for efficient accident prevention and a high safety performance.
This need for a concentration upon this performance in safety is becoming all the more important as we note the increase in the use of mechanisation. At present, there are excellent short courses which are arranged and from which benefit is derived. There is also the Institute of Industrial Safety Officers, which has 1,200 to 1,300 members. Through its membership, it offers a yardstick of efficiency in accident prevention. However, there are 2,000 safety officers in industry who could well be in possession of such a qualification. Unfortunately, no prescribed course is available to any man who wishes to attain a qualification through the Institute.

If he wishes to do so, he is left to his own devices, to work out his own salvation.
I hope that consideration will be given to the possibility of establishing something like sandwich courses at some of our colleges of technology, which would certainly assist in promoting the preparation of people to obtain this qualification. If we are to advance the new techniques in industry and introduce new methods of production, we must pay a higher regard to the task of preventing industrial accidents, and we must see to it that there are men and women who are trained am properly qualified to do this work. We do not employ a man, when we employ him to do a job, to pay partly for the job by spilling his blood. I regard the prevention of accidents in industry as one of the most important problems we have to overcome in a modern industrial society.
I thank the House for the indulgence and consideration which have been shown me this evening.

11.43 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour (Mr. Ernest Thornton): I should like, first, to offer my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr. Coleman) on his maiden speech. I know, as we all do, what an ordeal a maiden speech is, and doubtless my hon. Friend is feeling very much more comfortable now that he has got over it.
I congratulate him on the pleasing manner in which he addressed the House, the very great clarity with which he spoke and the obvious sincerity which underlay his remarks about this very important subject. I assure him that he has emerged from it with very great credit, and that the feelings of diffidence which he disclosed to the House were hardly necessary. I am sure that we can all look forward with confidence and pleasure to his further contributions to our deliberations.
In electing to make his first speech on industrial accident prevention, my hon. Friend has chosen a subject of outstanding importance, and I welcome the opportunity tonight to say something on this very important topic. My hon. Friend commented on the serious concern which has been caused by the continuing rise in the figures of reported accidents. I want to take this opportunity to endorse most


strongly what he has said and I assure him that my right hon. Friend is very deeply concerned about the accident situation in industry. I assure the House that my right hon. Friend regards these rising figures as something which we as a nation cannot afford, either on humanitarian or on economic grounds.
My hon. Friend has, quite rightly, referred to how strikes, official and unofficial, capture the headlines and how accidents in industry, usually because they occur in isolation, get little publicity. He quite rightly called attention to the fact that the loss, caused by accidents, to the economic wealth of the country in production far exceeds the loss from industrial disputes, whether unofficial or official.
This morning, the provisional figures of reported accidents for the fourth quarter of 1964 were published in the Ministry of Labour Gazette. For the final figures for 1964, we shall have to wait until the April issue of the Gazette. By adding the figures for the fourth quarter to those of the first three quarters of 1964, however, we get a rough total for the year.
What we get is a staggering figure of more than 268,000 reported accidents. This is the first time since the war that the total has exceeded the quarter-million mark. The figure of 268,000 represents an increase of more than 31 per cent. on the 1963 figure, which itself was a very high figure on a curve which has been rising almost continuously since 1958. The long-term trend of fatal accidents, however, has been a slowly falling one, but the provisional figures for 1964 are slightly up on 1963 and may well be even higher when final information is available.
There was, however, a special reason for that. The severe weather at the beginning of 1963, which brought some work to a virtual standstill, kept down the number of fatalities. On the other hand, the provisional figure for 1964, at 637, is 4½ per cent. less than that for 1962, when the number of fatal accidents was 668.
Taken at their face value, the total of 268,000 accidents represents a very grim picture. There are, of course, certain factors which must be taken into account when interpreting them as a measure of industrial safety. Among the

most important of these factors is the proportion of reportable accidents which are, in fact, reported. The two surveys on the reporting of accidents, which were carried out in October, 1962, and in April, 1964, suggest that this proportion was higher in 1964 than in 1963.

Mr. William Molloy: May I bring two important facts to my hon. Friend's attention? One of them was mentioned in the admirable speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr. Coleman) and the other is the statement made by Lord Robens, only a few days ago. The point I wish to make is that in the nationalised industries, under nationalisation, the fall in fatal accidents has been most dramatic and that last year Lord Robens was able to announce that the number of miners slain in getting coal had dropped every year and last year was the lowest.
In his speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Neath also drew particular attention to and complimented the firm with whom he had been employed—the Steel Company of Wales—for its attitude to industrial injury. I believe—and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for allowing me to go on for so long—that if examples like that are given the publicity which they deserve, other parts of industry might try to achieve similar results.

Mr. Thornton: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. I am apprised of it, and I welcome it, but I must get on, because I have some observations to make on the accident problem.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to say how much higher the total of reportable accidents will be for the year 1964 as a whole compared with 1963. However, we are now considering, as a matter of urgency, the best way of obtaining continuous information about reporting standards, and when this is available it will be possible to measure the effect of the reporting factor, because this is important in making a correct assessment of the incidence of accidents.
The next point which must be taken into account is the increase in the number of people at work, and, therefore, the number of people at risk, and the increase in the number of hours which these persons worked. There are other factors, too, but we have to recognise that when all these are taken into consideration they


do not explain fully the serious rise that has taken place in recent years, and it is unlikely that their cumulative effect is an adequate explanation of what has, unfortunately, happened.
The conclusion that there has been a real and substantial rise in the incidence of accidents seems, I am afraid, quite inescapable. This is an intolerable situation. It is one of which all of us, Government, employers, workers, and the public, ought to be ashamed. A sense of shame is often a prerequisite for reform, and it is reform that we need—a new spirit of determination throughout industry to stop the human suffering and waste of our scarce manpower resources which these appalling accident figures represent.
If any words spoken in the House tonight can help to arouse remorse and a determination to do better in future, they will have been well worth saying.
I have no doubt that many people will say, "That is all very well, but what are the Government doing about it?" The Government accept that they have a heavy responsibility in this matter, and they will not shirk it. But I want to say, with all the emphasis that I can, that the main responsibility for the continuing high toll of life and limb seems to rest with those who are engaged in industry, on both sides.
My hon. Friend rightly said that most of the accidents which occur in industry could he prevented. He is right about that, of course. About two-thirds of reported accidents come within the category of the notorious "Big Five", that is accidents which are due to various kinds of human failure—among them failure to behave with care and common sense. I think that we must appreciate that accidents of this kind cannot easily be reached by legislation, or prevented by factory inspectors. They can, however, be prevented if management and workers develop an active safety consciousness.
That does not mean merely a verbal acceptance of safety as a good thing, but an ingrained operating belief which really influences people's behaviour. In many firms this attitude is already understood, and very good results have followed. An example of this is the coal mining industry, to which my hon. Friend referred. The biggest responsibility rests, of course, with managements.

There is no avoiding that situation, and it is the employer upon whom rests most of the obligations imposed by the Factories Act.
In cases which the law does not and cannot reach it is management which sets the safety tone of the establishment. But the workers, let us not forget, have their responsibility, too. Without their co-operation in such matters as the use of guards, protective clothing and the exercise of reasonable care, the efforts of management are bound, to a greater or lesser degree, to be frustrated. I therefore most earnestly appeal to all those engaged in industry to take a fresh look at this whole question of safety; to re-examine their attitudes and their performance, and to see whether they can say, in all honesty, that what they are doing on safety is enough.
We in the Government will continue to do all we can—and it is a great deal—to help industry to move in the right direction. Though there are limits to what can be achieved by legal provisions, the Factories Act and the regulations made under it will continue to be of great importance. Where new provisions are shown to be necessary, or old ones are out of date, we shall take the necessary action. We shall continue to develop our advisory and propaganda work in this important field.
In particular, we intend to intensify the pressure which, with the full backing of the B.E.C. and the T.U.C., we have been exerting on industry with a view to the development of better safety organisation and practice. We are also very conscious that our knowledge of the factors which underlie the continued rise in the figures needs to be improved, and this is a matter on which the Chief Inspector of Factories is to mount a special inquiry by selected members of his staff.
The time at my disposal does not permit me to go into any detail about past Government action and future plans, but I must, however, refer to the specific question about safety supervisors which my hon. Friend brought to the attention of the House, a very important point on which I wish to comment. I can agree with the thought which lies behind much of what he has said, but there are one or two qualifications which ought to be expressed in making this general endorsement of his remarks.
In the first place, I think he may, unwittingly, have given the House the impression that all establishments covered by the Factories Act, in which more than 20 people are employed, are required to have a safety supervisor. This is not so. Requirements of this nature only apply in certain industries and processes, such as construction, ionising radiation and pottery, where very special problems arise.
In general, the view which has been taken is that, although the employment of safety officers in appropriate cases is very desirable and should be encouraged, the development of the practice should be on a voluntary basis. Again, while I entirely agree that the safety officer should be given proper time to devote to his safety duties, it is not always practicable, and may even be wrong in some cases, to insist upon a full-time appointment.
Finally, to make a more general comment, my hon. Friend's remarks left me with the impression that where there was

a full-time, well-qualified safety officer the main safety problems were solved. This is not so. I would draw the attention of the House to two things. First, we should never forget that it is the employer, and not the safety officer, who is responsible for compliance with the Factories Act and regulations. Secondly, that no safety officer, however well qualified he is, can be expected to get very far unless he receives the full support of top management. This is quite crucial for any safety effort in any establishment.
It has been very useful to ventilate this important question of industrial accidents, and I hope that what has been said tonight by hon. Members and myself will make a contribution to the solution of the problem and will meet with an adequate response. I thank my hon. Friend for giving me the opportunity tonight of making these observations.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Twelve o'clock.